None of this can be true....but....

[Highstool]

I have a new aquaintance. Practically the first time I had an actual conversation with him, he told me how he grew up in another country, but his family had to make a moonlight flit because of their involvement with the mob, when he was 14yo. His uncle eventually went to prison for attempting to murder his father.

This meant his sister had to give up a promising sporting career where she was already competing internationally.

His accent is "correct" for where he lives now because he was deaf until he was in his early 20s, when he had an implant fitted.

He cousin plays for a Premiership FC.

His Grandad is a very famous decorated war hero etc etc

Loads of really far fetched stories, that if they were true, he surely wouldn't have told someone he's only just met.

But it all checks out with stories in mainstream newspapers when you Google.

So is he pretending to be someone else? I just don't know why he'd be telling me!

I don't understand this either.

Yes. He's supposed to be a builder, but I asked him for advice/contacts when my bathroom flooded and that was the one time he hasn't jumped to do a favour.

@Highstool how come you keep ignoring poster’s questions about his deafness? Is it because there’s no possible way for it to be believable??

No, I might be mistaken about the treatment he said he'd had, and possibly there's another reason he's no longer deaf, I wouldn't know, although I did think he said implant. His hearing isn't great now, but he speaks normally. If everything checks out except his accent, that's even weirder.

You do bump into Walter Mitty type characters in life He may well be one of these. Or is playing a long con. Friend of mine married one who seemed the best thing since sliced bread and it was only when he was arrested that she found out he had conned thousands out of all their neighbours and been in and out of prison for decades

Where I’m from, rolled up 50’s are drugs money, end of.
I have a mate who fits bathrooms and while he does have some cash when he did ours I paid the bulk of it via transfer to his business account.
While I’ve never met someone with quite his pedigree, I have been around men like him.
Plenty of cash, always have good tickets to events, like to join clubs and give themselves a bit of legitimacy.
Stop telling him your private business, for starters.
Steer well clear. He’s not from your world and vice versa. You can be polite but leave him to it.
He is showing you who is he with the cash. Leave well alone.

Absolutely not true. My friend was born deaf and has absolutely no speech difference to a hearing person.

Yeahhh maybe it's my by-now suspicious nature but flashing 50's and turning up out of nowhere all charm and stories and usefulness and managing to get a pile of unplanned info out of me would have me quietly arranging to be a bit elusive, too.

Smells of something. Just not quite sure what. But something.

.... you know, he sounds a bit like Epstein sounded to be, before the lid got taken off the shit stew. Charming, likeable, charismatic, useful, rich.

Love it! 😂

Not to derail but… mange tout!

I work in a pub. Plenty tradies come in with £50’s over the weekend

Did your friend have an implant from birth though? I know some deaf people who speak normally but they’ve either had an implant since they were a baby or they are only partially deaf. It’s not possible to learn to speak if you can’t hear speech and haven’t heard it from a very young age. The OP said her friend didn’t have an implant until he was in his 20s

I wonder if what feels off is that he tells you all this stuff ... But none of it is really about him. So you know very little about who he is now?

His tall stories about relatives check out. But this is just flum flam. And the most basic info about him - that he's a builder - seems to be untrue.

Sorry you’re wrong. I know some who can speak really well and they were born deaf - not common though

It’s extremely rare and only possible through years of intense speech therapy from early childhood, where you’re basically shown how to move your mouth and where to put your tongue to form the words. Most still have a “deaf accent” though. Even more rare to not have an accent. But the OP’s friend’s story about his deafness is just not possible- even if he had had intense speech therapy since early childhood, it would have been in his home country’s language, so he’d have a strong accent, and learning English at all as a non-native deaf person would be an enormous feat.

I mean, tell that to every tradesman I know.

If you were the child of rape then maybe. (I mean, why would you tell a class of 14 year olds this???)

I didn’t mean a few £50’s I meant rolls of them but I absolutely get your point.
Maybe I’ve just mixed or been around some right dodgy articles. Once you’ve seen them at play they are hard to forget!

Do you have lived experience? How many deaf people do you know?

But how do you know the people in the news stories, google results etc are related to him? He could have found the news and built his story around them.

Yes I do have lived experience. I have a number of deaf family members, I know sign language and all about deaf culture and history. But even if I didn’t have lived experience, I’d think it would be fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain, that a fully grown deaf man who grew up speaking a different language, does not just come to the UK in his 20s, get an implant (which doesn’t make your hearing even close to perfect) and start speaking like a native hearing person! It’s ridiculous!

Yeah, this guy is ringing all sorts of alarm bells for me too. He sounds dodgy as fuck. I suspect it's because I met so many dodgy as fuck guys in my murky past 😂

He sounds like a scammer fishing for a mark.

I have some interesting relatives who made mainstream news back in the day, but it takes me some trawling to find the articles, and I know full names and all the gory details. It would be absolutely impossible to find them just by googling my own name.

How did you find all these stories online @Highstool ?

Did he tell you exactly what to Google to find them?

Plus, if he's lied about the deafness, it's a massive red flag. If he lied about that what else might he lie about? 🚩🚩🚩

My XP used to tell a lot of lies, he just enjoyed the feeling of getting one over other people. He lied as easy as he breathed. I used to catch him out and then he would say "oh it was only a joke, only stupid people would believe it", but also he used to forget and tell me how much he enjoyed tricking other people.

He was not a nice guy.

Tradies being paid cash in hand in a wodge of £50 notes...

Sounds dodgy as fuck, sorry 😂

At the very least it's dodging taxes.

And who knew that goes on?!