‘Stranger Things’ Fan Leaves Husband, Sends $10,000 to a Catfish Claiming to Be Dacre Montgomery

One Stranger Things fan had her life turned *upside down* (heh, get it?) when she was catfished by a scammer pretending to be actor Dacre Montgomery, who plays Billy Hargrove on Stranger Things.

McKayla, a single mom from Kentucky, shared her story on the Catfished YouTube series. She says she met the scammer in an online forum for artists, and he told her he was Dacre Montgomery. (Dacre happens to be one of McKayla’s favorite actors.) She was skeptical of his identity at first, saying, “Me and him just really hit it off, but of course, I’m suspicious from the get-go until he starts doing things that make me believe that he is who he is.”

She eventually believed it really was Dacre after he told her to specifically watch Stranger Things season 4, episode 4 before the season premiered. (You know the one. It’s called ‘Dear Billy,’ and it features Dacre’s character’s return.)

“And he showed up in that episode,” McKayla said. “I was like, well, who else would know that?” She also said the scammer would send her poems that matched Dacre’s writing style from his 2020 poetry book DKMH: Poems by Dacre Montgomery.

McKayla said that in their time talking, “Dacre” told her he was having issues with “his” girlfriend, model Liv Pollock, because she was controlling. McKayla told him she was in pretty much the same situation with her now-ex husband, and this experience bonded her to the scammer.

After a full year of talking online, “Dacre” asked McKayla to be his girlfriend, although the two never actually met in person. He asked her to keep their relationship a secret since “he” was still in a relationship.

Eventually, the catfish gave McKayla an ultimatum: She had to choose between him or her husband. And McKayla didn’t choose her husband.

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“Listen, it’s not working out. You’re not letting me be me, you’re not letting me be free, I said I need you to leave,” she said to her now-ex.

Not only did McKayla leave her husband for a liar, but she also sent “Dacre” about $10,000 after he said his girlfriend was also in control of his bank accounts, tricking her into funding his life for a year.

The series Catfished found out that McKayla was dealing with an imposter after they did a reverse image search on a check and found several other fake checks with the same signature online. They helped determine McKayla was being scammed by a “Romance Scammer,” someone who starts a fake relationship with a vulnerable person online to eventually steal from them.

Ultimately, McKayla chose to share her story in full despite what mean commenters might say so that other people don’t fall victim to the same kind of scam she did.

“If you’re someone like me, you’re afraid of abandonment, and you’re a real big people please, and you’re very co-dependent,” she said. “These scammers, they just kind of come in, and they leech off that.”