I was duped into thinking I was a friend and I even invited Ben to stay with me in the UK, luckily he was detained at passport control and sent back to Portugal (just after SteemFest last year). Even visited him in the immigration detention centre.

He eventually got back to the US, cos his mom felt sorry for him and got him a ticket home in time for Thanksgiving. Now in Mexico eh?

So yeah, I was well and truly suckered in too. Fell for his sob stories though and came up with my own solutions, he didn't ask me as I wanted to help get back on his feet so bad and had the means to help.

One of those was to get him a cellphone on credit, as I have a buy now, pay in 12 months and I trusted him enough to 'know' that he would pay it back within the year.

Why?

His phone was 'stolen' when he had one of his seizures so he couldn't move forward with Pandacoin or his website business, as everything on his laptop that he needed to access was 2FA enabled, for which he needed a phone. So he could not earn anything to get him out of Portugal or get home to US. He was living in a hostel and he hated it.

We had written on discord most days from about Sept through to November and I considered him a friend. Even defended him to Hive account@neoxian when he first didn't make payment of his loan back.

Funny not heard from him in about 6 months now.