As a solo traveller, I know how many women out there are looking for the next perfect opportunity to make a difference in the world.

Tashi (or whatever his name is) who had me fooled big time.

I had the same desire and it brought me into a scam I could never have believed existed. I feel now that I’m ready to share it with the world.

Here is my story of how 1 man gained the full trust of a single adventures western woman.

I had been travelling in Australia for around 1 month when I got contacted by a certain Sira Henkelmann on Facebook. She said she found my profile and was wondering if I wanted to join a project in India.
She explained in the text that she worked along with several other digital nomads on a charity project in India. She explained that the team needed a Swedish girl to travel in India and do a documentary about the culture and help promote the business through that video and sharing my experiences of the trip.

Sira seemed to me like a real person who needed a Swedish girl to travel and make this video. She said the business was about social entrepreneurship and that there were big opportunities to keep working on the project after the trip as well.

This would include to share my experience of the trip to Westerners and therefore get the money I spent on the trip reimbursed in form of commission for guided culture tours through India and Nepal. Sira also explained that I would go with a guide and director to shoot the video in different locations in India. She talked highly about this person as a leader, healer, inspiration and guru.
All this information was written to me on Facebook, so I felt I needed a proper phone call with someone from the organisation as well as a detailed email in order to go to India and feel like this was a legit project.

I tried to call Sira over Facebook but there was no response, she wrote me shortly after asking me if I could do a WhatsApp call with the project leader Tashi.

I called this Tashi guy, and he explained the whole concept to me over the phone. I asked questions about what was required from me and what I would get in return for my presence in India. He explained there were 4 different websites that needed videos and promotion to westerners about yoga retreats, culture tours, handicrafts and charities.

He also wanted someone who had knowledge about Youtube and Vimeo to help promote the videos there. I got links to videos with other girls who had done similar videos, and I also got links to the unfinished websites.
It all looked really legit and because I saw the videos with the other girls in them I trusted the project.

Needless to say, Tashi is a professional brainwasher, manipulator and liar who knows exactly what to say in order for you to trust him.

After the call with him, I asked to get a confirmation email with all the details. He told me one of his “team members” were going to send it to me.

The next day I got the email with the details. It said I was going to fly to Kerala in South India to stay in a shared room with the guide, get food and accommodation paid for, but that I needed to pay for the visa and plane ticket myself.

I looked alright to me, and I didn’t think about the fact that it didn’t say whether or not I was going to have Tashi as a guide or someone else from the team.

I shared my nervousness with Sira on Facebook but she kept assuring me that everything was fine and that she hoped Tashi would be the one travelling with me, as he apparently was the best person she had ever met.
My curiosity and desire for adventure eventually got me on a plane to India.

I arrived at the airport and called Tashi. He said he was going to be late because of issues in the traffic (I was not surprised as this is India we are talking about).

After 1 hour he showed up in a tuk-tuk.
While we were going towards Varkala North Cliff we talked and got to know each other. He seemed very friendly and I felt safe straight away. He told me stories about the project and his life and how he dreamed of getting more Westerners to come to India and contribute to a better world.

We arrived at the Guest House in the middle of the night and I was exhausted after the trip. We agreed to start talking about the project the morning after. When I saw the room I was a bit shocked as there was only 1 bed in there. Tashi explained that it was to keep the cost down but if I didn’t feel comfortable I could get my own room but then have to pay for it myself.

As I was too tired and it was too late to find a different room I accepted it and we basically just fell asleep.
The next day it was straight down to business. He showed me the cliff where we were staying and introduced me to a lot of people. It felt good to see how many people he knew there, and everyone seemed to have respect for him and treat him as a friend.

I got breakfast, coffee, lunch, and whatever else I needed to feel comfortable with him. I see now that was just a trick to make me trust him.

He showed me the websites and asked if I had any knowledge in Wordpress. I explained the projects I had been working on before and what I knew about online businesses and social media.

I saw that he got impressed by my skill set and he quickly gave me the responsibility to finish all 4 websites as well as making the videos and edit them.
He promised me a deal which seemed good to me. I finish the websites, do the documentary, share it on social media, promote the youtube channel and I get a certain % of the profit from people booking a trip through one of those websites.
He kept going on about how great it was that I was so skilled in the field, and how much he needed someone like me in the team.

By this time another girl named Tiffany Bethen had also contacted me on Facebook explaining that she also was a part of the team. She welcomed me to India and kept on flattering me with compliments on how much Tashi liked me already. It felt to me that she was a real person who had been working with Tashi for a long time. Tashi told me the story of how both Sira and Tiffany had met him in Auroville and worked with him for a long time.

This was all a lie.

As the days went on Tashi got more and more passionate about me and when he saw my efficiency with the websites he kept on giving me compliments on how great I was and more and more tasks to finish.
He gained my trust by telling me certain things, giving me things, keeping his promises of paying for the food and accommodation and so on.

I stayed in the room with him and made sure we never did anything apart from sleeping next to each other.
He did say after a couple of days that he had a crush on me, but because we had become good friends by then, I simply told him I was not at all interested in him and was only there for the project. He said he understood and that he also wanted to keep it on a professional level.

As I didn’t want him to gain stronger feelings for me I explained that I wanted an evening by myself to go out with some friends I had met the day before, who was staying in the room next to us.
We went out and I had a good time. I got back late in the night and Tashi was still awake. He got angry that I had been out for too long and that I didn’t take the project seriously. He said that this was not a normal party trip and that I was there to work, not to party.

I got furious at him and couldn’t help to show my anger and that I felt unfairly treated. He said he wanted me out of the project and this was the first time I saw how emotional he can be.

The next day I was scared that he was still going to be angry with me and kick me out of the project. We had a long conversation where I told him that I was doing my best with the project but that I was free to do whatever I wanted when I wasn’t working. He had a completely different attitude than the night before and said he was really sorry for his reaction.
He said I could stay on the project and finish the websites as promised.

A couple of days went by and I was working hard and met a lot of people every day. One was a French woman who owned a cafe on the cliff where we stayed. She wanted me to make her a website for her yoga retreats. I said yes and Tashi bragged about how he got me a job that easy by introducing us to each other.

I agreed to work on the French woman’s website as soon as I had finished the other ones. By this time I started feeling like Tashi didn’t give me the content I needed for the websites in regards to text, pictures and explanations on what he wanted on them. Every time I asked about certain things he told me to be patient and that either Sira or Tiffany was working on it as well.

Because of my understanding of how different cultures works I quickly realised that Indian time is not the same as European time. If I need an answer to an email it might take up to 1 week instead of 1 day, which I was used to.
This made me more patient and keep on doing the tasks that Tashi told me to do. I had trust in his skills as he told me so many stories of how he had run businesses before. Retreats, guided tours, hostels, a charity, and so on.

After about 10 days of intense work and a lot of new impressions, I felt that it was getting very intense to stay so close with Tashi and work with him every day. As soon as I asked too many questions or the wrong questions he got stressed and annoyed. I told him off and kept calm as I thought this was just a part of his personality.

By this time I had gotten so much respect for the project and Tashi had made me believe in it so much I didn’t question all of his actions.

One night I decided to go out again, but this time I was clear in my communication with Tashi that I wanted to have a good time with my friends and that I was not expecting the same reaction from him as last time I went out.

He was fine with that and I went to a bar with my friends. We had an amazing time and I met a really friendly guy from England, Dan. We connected instantly and I decided to spend the night at his place. I had been spending the previous nights in the tiny room with Tashi and felt that I needed some space.

The day after me and Dan had coffee in the morning and he was telling me about his plan to go to Vietnam.
He asked me if I wanted to go with him, and I got this really good feeling in my heart.

I knew for some reason I wanted to leave Varkala and go somewhere with someone who was not as intense as Tashi. I knew I might not be able to keep working on the websites without being with Tashi, and that my journey through India would be cancelled.

Despite this, I and Dan decided to go to Bali (not Vietnam) on the same evening. I went to tell Tashi and was expecting a very angry reaction from him for leaving, but he was actually really calm about it.

He said I could still work on the websites and the videos and he would find another Swedish girl to do the documentary with.
It all seemed to work out fine and I left with a really good feeling in my stomach. Even though India is an amazing country I was excited to go to a place where I could relax more.

In Bali, I felt so much freer and I worked with the websites and videos in my own pace without having Tashi interrupting me with people to meet or things to do all the time.

We still communicated a lot over Skype and Whatsapp and he was always making sure I kept on working.
In my mind, I never thought about why he did this. I was convinced it was because of his passion for the project and the desire to make it work.
One of the websites was an online store with handicrafts made by women in India. I was editing a video about these women so I really thought it was a real project.

Tashi also told me he already had buyers in England and Australia who were interested in buying a big quantity of the products. He gave me names to the buyers and had me sending voice messages to them letting them know about the status of the websites.

I realise now that these people were probably fake as well.

After over 1 month in Bali and didn’t really know where to go next, but I knew I wasn’t ready to go back home to Oslo. Tashi told me he had several buyers in England, and asked if maybe I wanted to go there and meet them and show them the website myself. Dan told me he had a house that I could stay in and I figured I could try living in Manchester for a while. England has always been a country I’ve been curious to live in, so I decided to go.

Tashi told me he had an investor who was investing in the company, and in his process of getting a visa to England as well. I had conversations with the investor over Skype several times, and he said he was willing to pay for my ticket to England. I made sure I was completely able to pay for it myself, but he insisted.

After a couple of days, I got the confirmation of the plane ticket. So far Tashi had held all the promises to me, and he showed me the email from the investor about their agreement to collaborate. It all looked so real to me.

In England though, things got more and more complicated with the websites and I realised there were a couple of things I needed answered.
I wrote Tashi a long email with my questions.

What are Sira and Tiffany’s roles in the business?
Where is the contract with the agreement of my profit from the websites?
Why was it so hard for Tashi to get a Visa to England when he had had businesses there before? and so on.

He answered my email by voicemail, not by email.
This was the first time I got a feeling something was up.

I remembered that I still had never spoken to either Sira or Tiffany over the phone. So I requested this from Tashi.
The next day he promised I could call Sira at a certain time. I did but I got no answer.

Then I got a voice message on Whatsapp from someone saying she was Sira. She explained how sorry she was for not being able to talk to me until now, and that she was in India and blamed it on the bad internet connection.

As soon as I heard the message I kind of knew this was not the Sira that had been writing to me all this time.
The girl in the voice message had a British accent and sounded much older than the Facebook profile would describe.
I started doubting her, and Tashi, so I made some research.

Some of the content for the websites that Tashi had sent me seemed a bit too advanced to match his level of English. I googled the content and found out it was stolen from other websites about yoga, handicrafts and charities.

Before asking him about anything regarding the content, I got contacted by an American girl on Facebook. I recognised her from the videos I had been editing as one of the girls who had been travelling with Tashi before. I told her I had seen her in the videos and that I was working with Tashi at that moment.

We decided to Skype, as she said she really wanted to speak with me. By this time I knew something was up and that I was about to find out what was really going on.

What the American girl told me on the Skype call was shocking. Not only was the profiles of Sira and Tiffany both fake, but the whole project was a scam.

Tashi had been fooling girls for years making them come to India to “work” and travel with him. He had been taking their money, using them to gain trust with authorities in India and sexually harassed them.

The American girl invited me to a Facebook group with over 50 members. Girls who had all been contacted online by one of his fake profiles to help him with the project and make the videos for him. It was pretty much exactly the same story as mine. He had promised the same things, getting the girls to trust him and the project, asked them to borrow him money and so on.

I realised I was actually one of the luckier ones who had not been borrowing him money or gotten sexually abused.
The girls in the Facebook group told stories about him that was really uncomfortable. He had been using several different fake accounts on various social media platforms to get the girls to trust him and go to travel with him in India. He had also changed his own name several times.

I felt so stupid that I had fallen for his games, but it was helpful to see that I was not the only one.

It’s incredible how one man can have such an influence on others. I have been blaming myself for not seeing all the lies, but I also realise he is a professional at what he does, and that I can’t blame myself.

The anger and sadness I felt quickly turned into empathy and sorrow. I feel sorry for Tashi for being that kind of person. He has no sense of reality and I think he even started to believe his own lies.

Until this day, I still don’t really know what his main goal with this whole scam is, but all I know is that I’m happy I was not being hurt more than I was.

The people in the Facebook group are determined to stop him by getting the authorities involved, but I feel that I can contribute more by sharing my full story, unfiltered and without judgement towards Tashi or anyone else involved.

After all, I’m okay, and I have become stronger after this. I have learned a lot and hopefully, after reading this you will make sure to do proper research before walking into a trap that can have profound consequences on your life.

Love
Tess ❤