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I trolled my dad and tricked him into sending me money for weeks

I trolled my dad and tricked him into sending me money for weeks

There are different ways to get your parents to give you money, and for Chidi* it turns out catfishing is one of them.

The 23-year-old talks about discovering his father’s feminine side and why pretending to be a woman was the perfect punishment for his father’s actions.

As told to Boluwatife

You should know two things about my father: He’s an unrepentant womanizer and as stingy as they come.

I only found out about womanization a few years ago, but that stingy part? I always knew that from my father. More specifically, I knew that my father was often hesitant to spend money, but I thought it was because he didn’t have much of it. That wasn’t exactly a far-fetched idea, considering he’s a civil engineer with a wife and six children to support.

In addition, he was hardly there because he was working on one construction site or another. I assumed he had to constantly make an effort to care for us.

It became increasingly clear to me that it was no coincidence that I received money from my father; it required serious planning. Several times I saw my mother sitting across from my father at the dinner table and discussing things after we (the children) had cleared the plates.

These discussions often centered around money—how much she needed to pay a bill and why exactly the bill was necessary. It was like a budget presentation and approval meeting. My father wouldn’t drop anything if she didn’t “defend” her needs well enough.

I remember in 2015 I almost missed the deadline to pay my WAEC registration fee because I accidentally gave him two different dates as the payment deadline. He assumed I had lied about the money and refused to pay until my teacher visited him.

The university was no better. My father never answered my calls, just in case there was money involved. He only replied to my text to let me know when he had sent me the usual £5,000 he sent once or twice a month. I didn’t think much about his attitude because it wasn’t strange – the whole family knew he hated spending money. But in my senior year I made an interesting discovery.

My university was in the same condition as my family home, but I hardly went home because the distance between home and school was too great to visit regularly with my meager pocket money. However, one day in 2022, I left school to attend a party at a nightclub not far from home and surprisingly met my father at the same nightclub.

Luckily he didn’t see me, but I had a good view of him from my seat on the other side of the club. This man danced with a hot babe and held her like his life depended on it.

I couldn’t tell my mother what I had seen because I was afraid there would be problems at home. But I had to tell someone, so I called my younger sister instead, and that’s when I realized I was the least informed person in my family.

Apparently my father had a penchant for pursuing everything in skirts. My sister was still in high school, so she lived at home and had direct access to the books my mother repeatedly accused my father of spending all his money on different women. The times he wasn’t home that I thought were due to hustling? Oga actually enjoyed his life with women.

From what my sister told me, I realized that womanizing had always existed, but my mother never made a secret of it. I think she thought he would grow out of it, but had no choice but to complain loudly when he continued after almost all of the children were grown and out of the house.

I was quite disappointed to find out about my father. This man struggled to support his own family but spent his money generously on his girlfriends. I know how often my mother had to take out loans to finance her grocery business when we were younger. I was angry, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t confront him and risk losing financial support for the school.

But then, a few months later, I found an opportunity to take revenge on my father.

I don’t remember what I did on Facebook that day, but I unexpectedly found my father’s second Facebook profile. I say second because he already had one that we all knew about. This new profile only contained his middle name and a shortened version of his last name, but from the profile picture I was sure it was him.

My friend Ada* was in my dorm room that day and I showed her the profile and complained that my dad had probably created a secret Facebook account to trick women into thinking he was single.

Ada jokingly suggested opening a fake account to trick him, and what started as a joke quickly became true. I opened a new account, pretended to be a girl, and uploaded Ada’s pictures to make my claim realistic. I sent my dad a friend request, and when I woke up the next day, he had accepted it.

The next week I was in a “talking phase” with my dad – of course he thought it was a great baby. Whenever he asked for pictures or video calls, Ada would take over. The second week I started billing him. Surprise, surprise, he sent money. The first amount my father sent was ₦50,000. He had never given me £50,000 before as his actual child. I shared the money equally with Ada.

The scam lasted three weeks and my father sent a total of ₦250,000 to his “mystery wife”. The amount was so high because I asked him to send £100,000 for the supposed plane ticket to bring his baby to our city so they could finally meet.

Ada and I had claimed that the “baby” was a university student in another part of the country, which is why we were able to extend the meeting to three weeks. The “baby” was supposed to travel to our state during the semester break and meet with my father. Of course, we blocked him immediately afterwards and shared the money.

After we blocked him, I called my sister and tried to get a feel for how things were at home, but she said everything was fine. My father didn’t act as if anything strange had happened and just carried on as normal.

Of course he had to carry on as normal. How do you tell your wife, “My online girlfriend cheated on me”? It was the perfect punishment and I don’t feel bad at all. I would do it again if I had the chance.

That was over a year ago, but I still secretly smile when I see my dad. I’m tempted to tell him that I’m his “online girlfriend” one day, but I’ll keep that a secret for a little longer.

*Names have been changed for reasons of anonymity.

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