Podcast Episode 3: That Time I Was Surrounded By Idiots

For years, Jen had been telling people what she was seeing. The body language. The patterns. The feeling that something was deeply, deliberately wrong. And for years, she had been met with skepticism, silence, or a polite suggestion to try again later. This episode is about the moment that changed. From a hotel lobby to a police station to a spa in Koreatown, Jen pieces together a story that is stranger — and more validating — than anything she could have scripted. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a complete stranger confirms everything. Some people really do see what others miss. This is the episode where the proof shows up. That Time I Was Surrounded by Idiots — a story about instincts, validation, and a t-shirt that says more than it was ever meant to.

Talk Nerdy To Me® - Episode 3 Transcript

I have four daughters, and I don't like what I found in that report. If you need anything, say this word, and I can take care of the situation for $5,000. It only costs $5,000 to take someone out. It's shocking how validating that is. Welcome to Talk Nerdy to Me.

This is the unbelievably true life story of Jen Friel, and a warning to those listening. Once you hear it, you may never experience your own life in the same way. If a stranger looked you in the eye and said it would cost $5,000 to make your problem go away, would you believe them? Would you pay it? Would you go somewhere morally you had never considered?

This is the episode where Jen starts to look in just as much as she had been looking out. I had spent years trying to explain what I was seeing. But now, I didn't have to. It was on camera. Well, hopefully, it was captured on camera.

That's the one thing I deeply regretted not getting from the cruise ship. I later discovered that cruise ships are notorious for staying uninvolved. International waters, different jurisdiction, hey, not their problem. But after learning a lot about women's rights and how to protect myself, I found out that hotels are different. They're considered safe havens.

Staff is actually trained to look for things like human trafficking at valet and check-in. Having been stalked before, I instinctively knew what to say. So the next day, I took a deep breath, stayed as calm as possible, and walked into the Hotel Normandy. Upon arriving at the front desk, Jen was greeted by the hotel manager. Hi, I'm the victim of a crime that happened last night.

And I was wondering if I could see your surveillance footage just to see if there's anything on it that I can use. Not a problem. The manager said, let's talk to our technician in the back, who happens to be here today, and we'll see how we can help you. I entered the back room, uneasy and unsure of what I was about to see or not see. I just knew what I experienced, knew in my mind, I fought back as hard as I could and knew the Uber driver confirmed it too.

Still, all of this felt like a Hail Mary. Unfortunately, the majority of companies have surveillance cameras on them. The majority of companies have surveillance cameras as a prop and not a tool. It's exceptionally rare for them to either be turned on or to have a large enough memory to store footage captured. The technician then cited a law I had never heard of.

Just because you're the victim of a crime doesn't mean I legally have to give you this footage, the technician said. In fact, if we do give this to you, you could use it against us. I remained calm and reassured him. I have the time for my Uber pickup on exactly when this happened. If you could please look at the footage at that exact time, and if you don't see what I'm telling you, I would totally understand and respect not collecting anything.

But if you do, I would hope you understand how troubling this is for me and how much this would help me having this footage. I then played the recording from the Uber driver to continue to gather empathy. The technician fortunately complied, scrolling through the footage to the timestamp I provided at pickup, and technically from the metadata from when I first got in the Uber. I burst into tears seeing the footage of me clearly in a state of distress. Either the tears or the accuracy of my statement endeared the technician.

Word for word, what Jen described played out on screen. Regardless of what either of them thought was happening, you could very clearly see Jen was distressed, and that both she and the Uber driver knew something was wrong. As a photographer with a photographic memory, it was surreal to actually see this footage. The framing, you'd think it was a scene from a movie. The way, the way I placed my hand on the wall somehow forced him to move directly into the camera's angle.

I didn't plan that. I didn't even know the camera was there, let alone turned on. I had never approached one of the stalkers like that before. I still don't fully understand what came over me. I think I just needed them to know that I knew that I wasn't invisible in my own story.

So I intentionally kept touching the brick, kept talking about the architecture, walking back and forth past my husband, who again was distracted, trying to get us home, calling our Uber. And before we crossed the street to get in the car, I pointed back one more time, talking as loudly as I could, like if I was loud enough, someone would finally hear me. Which, technically, I guess they did. Jen's Uber driver didn't waste any time and immediately commented on what she had seen while waiting in traffic all the way down the street. She was so upset, I had to quickly grab my phone from my purse to record her, which is why I asked her to repeat what she had just said.

There was 39 you guys. Can you say it one more time? Jen's husband knew something had just happened, but they both still believed she was simply gifted at reading body language. He had no idea why she was suddenly commenting loudly on architecture. It wasn't part of her usual behavior.

But that's exactly why this moment mattered. A complete stranger had seen what Jen had been seeing without any prompting, without knowing her. It was the validation she had been waiting for. The technician agreed that something was wrong and said he'd then check how many angles of coverage they had on the guy. He paused before asking how I wanted to receive the footage.

Stunned, Jen then realized she would have to get a USB drive. She remembered the CVS down the street to make sure it would be as high of resolution as possible for police and potentially anyone else was going to help. Still in shock, Jen tried to process what she had just seen. I have to be a body language expert. It was another square, just like all the others.

Jen took the footage and went back to the police. I had edited the surveillance footage together with the Uber driver's voiceover to show that this wasn't just me. I now have validation that this is actually happening. Standing in the lobby of the police station, I showed them exactly how fast I acted. This is what I mean when I say I can read body language.

Look, it only took me 14 seconds to know something was wrong and that this person was part of the same pattern I'd been telling you all about. I know what I am seeing. And it is the same pattern as the people who also took pictures and video of me and my family on the cruise. But I also have their statements. The officer didn't know what to do.

After countless times I had been there, he finally recommended I hire a private investigator. So I did. Which is really difficult to do, by the way. My father was retired at that point and there's no manual on, hey, here's how to hire a private investigator. After scrolling on Yelp, I called one guy who sounded like he was doing the dishes.

I briefly explained my situation and the fact that I now had surveillance footage. I'm being stalked. And it has something to do with the location setting on my phone. They're dispatched. It's dislocation tracking somehow.

I don't know if any other data is compromised, but I'm not sure. So I would need this person to also be a tech expert. We get this now a lot. I'm not that guy, but I do know who everyone uses around here. He's a good man.

A good man with one of the crappiest jobs on the planet, I thought, but didn't say. Think about it. Every day of a private investigator's life is someone else's worst day. You don't hire a private investigator because things are going well. They're constantly absorbing other people's problems and I could only imagine that that wears on you after a while.

Jen's husband took her phone and drove to meet with the investigator. Meanwhile, one of her bridesmaids, whose grandmother was one of the most well-known and respected gangsters to come out of England, suggested Jen come with her to a spa in Koreatown. There was nothing Jen could do right now, she told her. And if they followed her into the spa, she'd be right there with her. I'm not sure what was more violating.

The experience of being stalked by proxies or the Koreatown massage I was not prepared for. I'm pretty certain my gyno has seen less than what she saw. the investigator did was run a program on Jen's phone that checked for any tracking exploits. As that was happening, the investigator took the names and simply googled them. He then found something.

Something huge. The CEO had been arrested. Arrested again. This time for attempted murder, extortion, and kidnapping in Thailand. He then called to read to me some of the headlines.

Kidnap on cam. Ex-con jailed for smuggling millions of ecstasy pills. Who then became Forbes featured CEO is arrested in Thailand. Kidnap on cam. There's video.

Clearly being shocked and vocal in public is not only a thing I do at bars, but also very quiet spas. And I love how you can say to someone, yeah, I co-founded a company with someone who was arrested for attempted murder, which is bad enough. But then you add in it happened in Thailand and it just enters a whole new dimension of surreal. I asked the private investigator the most obvious question I had. Does that mean he didn't do this?

Because if he's in jail in a foreign country, how could all this still be happening to me? I don't know, the private investigator said, but let me get back to the investigation. We hung up the phone and a few hours later, the private investigator handed my husband a background report on the names we'd given him along with a report on my phone. No tracking devices, but apps with vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Private investigators have access to information that requires a license to pull.

Even as rabid of a digital sleuth as Jen is, this was beyond anything she could have found on her own. One of the background reports was about 15 pages. The others were only a page or two. The sizable difference between reporting was no surprise to the investigator, given what he had just seen on Google. Before Jen's husband left, the private investigator pulled him aside, man to man.

I have four daughters and I don't like what I found in that report. I'm retired special forces and you have my number. If you need anything, say this word and I can take care of the situation for $5,000. Jen's husband called her on the drive back and told her the word and price tag associated with the extermination. That's right.

That's the going market rate. Jen's husband was shocked. She knew this, but it was far from the most shocking thing he had experienced that evening. Remember when I told you my ex-boyfriend's family were part owners in a big soccer club? That meant growing up, he had private security, who was a former member of SAS, the British version of special forces.

I remember what it was called because of the watch he showed me. It literally just said SAS on the back, but either way, the SAS member is still friends with the family and we would all grab drinks together, just the three of us. He told me these stories about how he now assists in certain situations. One story involved an ashtray, but most of what he did was made to look like an accident. He's outwardly a very likable guy, so I didn't question asking him about the cost.

He said it was $5,000. Now, anytime I'm mad at someone, I get to go, it's only $5,000 to take you out. It's shocking how validating that is to then go, meh, not worth it. When Jen got home, she went straight to her computer to see with her own eyes what she had just been told. She found the articles, the photos, the videos.

She hadn't seen the CEO in over two years. He had stepped down publicly from the company right before she was fired in November of 2019. She had just won the company two awards in Vegas, one for their tech, one for being a female co-founder. She'll let you draw your own conclusions about what that timing means. I knew I couldn't control anyone's behavior or how I was perceived, but what I could control was whether I stayed in an environment that no longer felt safe.

So I quietly left, hoping that distance would bring peace back. to my personal life. As evidenced by this podcast, clearly it did not. The videos and screenshots of the kidnapping were just as shocking as the headlines themselves. Ex-Marine among those arrested in bizarre kidnapping in Thailand, read one.

The Associated Press, the Daily Mail, NBC News, and others all had their takes. But a picture is worth a thousand words. What the footage shows is a man in a suit and a COVID-style mask walking up to a group of people seated at a table. He throat punches one of them, the victim, and then simply stands there while other men physically drag him out the door in broad daylight. But it wasn't just footage of the kidnapping.

There was also video of a SWAT-style team entering a hotel room and handcuffing the CEO, along with others who were arrested at the scene. And the t-shirt he was wearing when they took him down, it read, why am I surrounded by idiots? I know, he used to wear it around the office. What I found fascinating once the shock of attempted murder, extortion, and kidnapping were off was the additional charge of illegal assembly. That phrase means a group coming together with a shared criminal purpose, often tied to planning or carrying out a crime.

Taken together, that means that prosecutors weren't describing an isolated incident. They were pointing to what appeared to be a coordinated effort involving multiple people. What a coincidence. It's important to note that being charged is not the same as being found guilty. It means authorities believe there is enough evidence to move forward with an arrest.

Still, the existence of documented, coordinated criminal activity, regardless of the final outcome, gave Jen something tangible. It added weight to her claims and helped law enforcement take what she had been reporting seriously, even if the CEO's attire spoke differently. You'd think seeing him in handcuffs would be spectacularly gratifying. Only if I said that, I'd be lying, because it wasn't. I had no attachment.

I just wanted to stop being stalked. Looking now at my own surveillance footage, I couldn't believe how quickly I processed everything. I processed everything. And even our Uber driver, Sandra, she was in traffic, and she saw the same thing that I did from down the road. Maybe she and I can get a course discount on body language training.

Either way, I was equally as fascinated with stopping what was happening to me as much as figuring out how I was seeing it in the first place. I finally had validation. I've known my entire life, I experience everything in a unique way, but here's footage of me actually doing it. Jen was more confused than ever about her next steps, but more confident than she'd been in years. She had proof.

She had a private investigator. She had a 15-page background report and a co-founder in handcuffs halfway around the world. But the question that started this episode hadn't gone away. Would you pay $5,000 to make your problem disappear? Would you go somewhere morally you'd never considered?

Jen didn't pay it. She didn't have to, because what she was about to discover was worth more than any amount of money, and it had nothing to do with the people following her. In the next episode, the investigation deepens with the help of a human lie detector and an old friend, the modern-day shaman, who not only helped Jen in her dating life, but could now help give her a word for what she had been experiencing. Jen comes face-to-face with a series of revelations about the pattern, about the people behind it, and about something inside herself that explains why she was so different, which, by the way, brought more questions than answers, because of course it did.