The first case of Love Con Revenge focused on Montana-born Todd Dean, who infamously came to be known as the Selfie Scammer. He scammed as many as eight women, and he felt that nobody would be able to catch him, and even if they did, then they wouldn’t be able to prove anything in the court of law. Well, Brianne Joseph, a private investigator, and Cecilie Fjellhøy, who had also been a victim of a romance scam before, didn’t think that. Cecilie, after being scammed, dedicated her life to helping such women, who were preyed upon by people like Todd Dean. Why did she do that? Because she knew how difficult it was in such cases to get justice or to prove anything substantial in court. Also, she knew about the shame, the stigma attached to it, because of which the women often didn’t speak up. So let’s find out what happened in the Todd Dean case and if he was apprehended by the authorities.
How did Todd Dean scam women?
Born in 1968 in Billings, Montana, Todd Dean graduated from Billings West High School in 1986. He then pursued a bachelor’s degree in business administration, something that he had always wanted to do since his dream was to start his own entrepreneurial journey one day.
Most of these scammers follow a very similar modus operandi, be it the infamous Tinder Swindler or the Selfie Scammer, Todd Dean himself. Jill Schardein was a single mother to a daughter, and she felt she was ready to date after having been alone for quite some time. She was on a dating app when she came across Todd Dean’s profile. The man seemed like a quiet and successful entrepreneur, and so she decided to meet him and see how things went from there. The first date felt like a dream, and it was a great confidence boost for Jill. She got a sense of validation that she hadn’t had in a long time. Todd started texting her on a regular basis, and the man gave her update after update about his life through video messages. He said that he was the founder/CEO of a mental healthcare facility called Sanjara Wellness, located in southern Kentucky. He told Jill about his noble plans to help people who were struggling with mental health issues. So apart from the fact that the man was rich, Jill felt that he also had a golden heart.
Now, there came a period when Todd stopped texting Jill, and it was a well-thought-out plan on his part. He basically did it to make her curious: to take her to a state of desperation where she was constantly searching for answers pertaining to why the person was ghosting her when everything was going so well. Well, Todd made a comeback, and this time around, he had gained a slight advantage over Jill. He asked her for a sum of money, as he needed to pay off certain debts, and he repaid her that amount, adding another $500 as a token of his appreciation, very quickly indeed. This was done to show Jill that he was a trustworthy man, and she bought into his lies. He slighted her to an extent that one couldn’t imagine. From that point onwards, he constantly asked for money, from $25 to $12000, anything she could give him. When she wasn’t able to, he questioned her feelings; he questioned the kind of person she was. There came a point when Todd had the audacity to ask Jill if she could ask for money from her 17-year-old daughter. Jill felt that she was groomed to the point that she would have given him access to her daughter’s money. And then, one day, Todd disappeared. It took some time for Jill to realize that she had been scammed and that she didn’t have even a single penny to her name. She had even spent her entire retirement fund on Todd, and she was shattered, and somewhere she blamed herself.
Where is Todd Dean now?
Brianne Joseph, as well as Cecilie Fjellhøy, came across many other women like Karen, Kristi, Bridget, etc., who had been scammed by Todd. The man lived in a fancy condo in downtown Nashville, and he’d been sending selfies and videos to women to get as little as 10 dollars a piece. Both Brianne and Cecilie knew that unless they had some proper evidence against the man, some paper trail that could prove that he was transferring those funds to his account, they would not be able to put him behind bars. They both got in touch with Sheena, a Sanjara Wellness employee who worked as Todd’s assistant. Through the account details provided by Sheena and the voice-recording given by a former loan officer assistant named Terra, Brianne and Cecilie could finally go to the police and press charges against the man.
The account payments were enough to prove that he had taken money, but in cases of personal loans, where the woman had given the money to him, it became a little difficult to press criminal charges. Well, everybody knew that they didn’t transfer the money of their own free will, and that the vulnerable women were brainwashed, but it becomes a little difficult to prove that in court. So, the bank did order Todd to pay every single penny back to those aggrieved women, and in return, he played a masterstroke: he filed for bankruptcy on 29th December 2023, stating that he did not have any money left to repay his debts. Also, he filed a defamation suit against a man named Gerald Messier, who had posted about him on his social media account. Todd argued in court that the woman gave him money of their own accord, and so they didn’t have any right to call him a swindler and tarnish his image.
You will be surprised to know that Todd continues to rent his high-rise condo in Nashville, and though the court has taken over his Sanjara property, his lavish lifestyle hasn’t changed a bit. As per his LinkedIn profile, he now runs a business advisory firm, called Todd Dean & Co in Nashville, helping entrepreneurs to achieve their full potential. He still pretends to be a mental health activist and influencer, who claims that he has big plans to help people in need. Yes, he’s been branded the Selfie Scammer by the media, but does that make the trauma that those eight women went through any lesser? Well, in Todd Dean’s case, I don’t think justice was served, but I do hope that the media attention and the trial in itself were enough for every woman out there to know his reality and not fall into his trap.
