June 4, 2026 • 52 mins
Betrayal Weekly is back. Aaron was committed to supporting the woman he loved, no matter the cost. Then one day, he asked for receipts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, I have something exciting to share with you.
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and a guided Betrayal journal filled with thoughtful prompts. Whether
(00:22):
it's for yourself or as a gift for someone you
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work we do. Visit Betrayal podcast dot shop to explore
the full collection. Pre Orders are open now. Hey everyone,
just a note before we begin. This episode discusses suicidal ideation.
Please take care when listening. Betrayal Weekly is officially back.
(00:50):
This is season three, episode one. Each episode tells a
unique story of deception and broken trust, and each storyteller
has found their own path forward. Whether you've been with
us from the beginning or you're just tuning in, welcome.
We are starting this season with Aaron's story.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm at work, just plugging away, and I get an
email notification on my smartphone. I look down and it's
from the FBI ari information about Sabrina Taylor.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
My name is Aaron Ward. I'm a software engineer working
in video games.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Aaron spent his whole career working on popular video games.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I worked on Halo Infinite, I worked on Minecraft. I've
worked on a bunch of little projects for Nintendo. One
of my minor claims to fame is I had the
number one played game on Nick dot com in two
thousand and eight, which was SpongeBob SquarePants refremble.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Aarin's a third generation computer nerd. He grew up in
rural Ohio with his siblings and parents who worked in
computer science.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
My parents were what I would call upper middle class,
both white collar, working professionals.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Aaron's parents made enough money for their families to live comfortably,
but a lot of people in their community struggle to
make ends meet. His parents tried to give back wherever
they could.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My parents always volunteered a lot. They were very generous,
and they also helped lead a lot of local fundraisers.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
His parents taught him to be generous with his money
and his time.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
My parents were a lot about honesty and a lot
about trying to help people.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That needed it. Aaron spent most of his free time
playing video games or reading about them.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I was a really big Nintendo fan, and I had
a subscription to Nintendo Power.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Nintendo Power was a magazine all about Nintendo games. It
had comics, game reviews, and articles. Aaron read every issue,
and when he was in fifth grade, he read an
article that sparked his interest.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
They mentioned the opening of the DigiPen campus.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
DigiPen is a college near Seattle that specializes in video
game design. Even though Aaron was only in fifth grade,
I knew very.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Early on that's really what I wanted to do with
my life.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Getting into DigiPen became Aaron's life goal.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
One of our freshman year activities when I was in
high school was writing three things that you wanted to
try to accomplish in your life. My three things were
working on a triple A video game title, graduating from DigiPen,
and being a Jeopardy champion.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
As of this recording, Aaron is not a Jeopardy Champion yet,
but he's accomplished his other two goals.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Because senior year.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
In high school, he was accepted into DigiPen. He left
the farms and factories of rural Ohio and jumped headfirst
into a world of video games. It was exciting and
Aaron learned a lot, But DigiPen had one big shortcoming.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
DigiPen has a ninety five to five male to female ratio,
so DigiPen was four years of having almost no female socialization.
As someone who had mostly female friends in high school,
that was a big change for me.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Aaron noticed how being in a male dominated environment was
impacting the people around him, and he didn't like what
he saw.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I had seen a lot of my peers at Digjapan
starting to go down that path of misogyny because they
weren't being around women in their day to day lives,
so the only women they were exposed to were actresses
or people in the media.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Aaron didn't want to go down that path, so he
read books and worked with his therapist to learn what
healthy relationships really looked like.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
One thing I learned is to try to not be
transactional in relationships. It's not about I do this for
you, you do this thing for me. Relationships need to be
about the broader scope of caring for each other and
being there for each other when stuff is hard.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
After graduating from college, Aaron and some friends moved into
an apartment together. He was working as a video game
programmer and loved the life he'd built. He felt ready
to meet someone and decided to give dating in Seattle
a try.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I was not super outgoing. I was not a go
out to the bars and meet someone kind of person,
and that's when I turned to internet dating. At the
time two thousand and seven, the iPhone is barely a thing.
There's no tender, so what I'm left with option wise
(06:23):
are Craiglist personals.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Craigslist Personals was a subsection of Craigslist for people who
were looking for relationships, romantic connections, or friendships. You could
post an ad about yourself and what you were looking for.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I had noticed there was a glut of men looking
for women ads, so I mostly focused on responding to
the few women that had posted their ads up.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
One day, while scrolling through Craigslist, Aaron saw an ad
that caught his attention.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
The headline of it was about how white guys are
scared to date black women, and it intrigued me enough
to at least read it. In the ad, she talked
about how she was a nerdy black woman who grew
up in a largely white Midwestern area, and how the
(07:11):
white men of the Seattle area had never seemed to
approach her or approached her in very poor ways.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Aaron responded to the ad, apologizing on behalf of the
white nerdy men of Seattle. The author of the post
thought his response was funny and wrote him back.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I found out her name was Sabrina. We exchanged pictures
over email and had a couple of emails back and
forth before we decided to go out on a date
to the local Athleash dog park.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
On the day of their date, Aaron headed to the
dog park feeling nervous but excited.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
She showed up looking just like her pictures with her
pet Dalmatian Satchel, who was very sweet, and we ended
up taking a nice long hour plus walk where we
both went through our lives and the things we have
in common. She grew up in Iowa, I grew up
in Ohio, so we both grew up in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Aaron immediately felt relaxed around Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
We also talked about all of our different nerdy interests,
video games, anime, television shows. We were both big sailor
moon fans. We had both played basically every Nintendo game
that had ever been made, Mario's, Zelda's Final Fantasies.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
After their first date, Aaron couldn't wait to see Sabrina again.
He invited her to hang out with him and his
friends at a pub they liked on the east side
of Seattle. He was a little nervous would Sabrina click
with his friends, but as soon as she showed up,
his nerves melted away.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
She got along with basically everybody. She is magnetic and
dras a lot of people around her to listen to
her talk about whatever she's talking about. She's definitely the
kind of person that can make friends very easily in
a crowd.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Aaron loved hanging out with his friends with Sabrina by
his side.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
The fact that she was so charismatic was excriefly attractive
to me. It really helped fill in some of my
gaps of getting conversations started and breaking the ice socially
with new people.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
After that night at the pub, Aaron and Sabrina had
their first kiss.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
We had great physical chemistry as well as having a
lot of things in common, so that really felt like
it was kind of a meant to be situation.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They started spending more and more time together. Soon they
were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. They had long conversations about
their backgrounds and dreams for the future.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
She was an intern for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
and she was finishing up her double bachelors in public
health and women's studies, with her end goal being becoming
a doctor. She had big plans for her life going forward.
That was something that was attractive to me. In a
possibly forever partner.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
With Sabrina, the world felt big.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
We went on a couple of little trips to the coast,
and being with her just really got me out of
my shell and got me out of my apartment with
my roommates and out doing things, even if it was
just shopping or wandering around Pye Place Market.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And of course, they loved playing video games together.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
She would have a game that she really liked the
story of wasn't quite dexterous enough to beat, and so
she'd get us started and I would do the later
harder levels for her so we could both see the
ending of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They were on the same team.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Sabrina really made me feel seen and appreciated in a
way that I hadn't been for a while. She always
made me feel like I was a priority in her life,
and I tried to do the same.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They began to talk about their long term goals.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I wanted the stereotypical white picket fence wife, two and
a half kids, et cetera. She was looking toward medical school,
so kids and getting married and stuff that was down
the road a bit, and I was okay with that.
At this point, we're still early to mid twenties, so
(11:37):
we've got some time.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Aaron and his friends moved into a new house together
in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
A month after me and my roommates had moved into
the house, Sabrina comes to me and says that her
apartment is going condo. Obviously, she can't afford to buy it,
and she's not making a lot of money as an
intern at the Gates Foundation, and she's still trying to
finish up that last month or two of school. She
(12:06):
basically doesn't have anywhere to go, so.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Sabrina moved in with them.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
I was excited to move in with my girlfriend, even
if it was on a slightly faster schedule than I
was planning on in my head. I was happy to
have her with me every day, waking up with me,
going to bed with me, just beg here out all
the time.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
In true Sabrina fashion, she made the transition easy. She
brought a lot of laughter and fun to the house.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
She got along really well with my roommates. She integrated
very quickly into the friend group. It was just a
lot of fun to have everybody living together. You know,
we all played rock band together, and we could kind
of be loud and crazy because we weren't sharing a
wall with anybody.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But living in the same house also meant seeing each
other's daily struggles up close. Sabrina had been dealing with
chronic back pain. Aaron saw just how much of a
toll it was taking on her.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Had gotten bad enough that she had to call out
of work a couple of days for it. So I
encouraged her to go to the doctor and you know,
kind of get this checked out.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Sabrina agreed. The day of her appointment arrived, and when
Aaron came home from work, he was anxious to hear
how it went.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I come home and she's seated on the couch, looking
very defeated. So I sit down and I hold her hand,
and that's when she tells me her doctor had diagnosed
her as having multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
When Aaron and his girlfriends Sabrina, moved in together, Aaron
realized how much her chronic back pain was impacting her
day to day life. He encouraged her to go to
the doctor's and she did. When she came back from
her appointment, Erin could tell right away that something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So I sit down and I hold her hand, and
I asked her what happened that day, and that's when
she tells me that her doctor had diagnosed her as
having multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Aaron held her close as Sabrina began to cry.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
She started talking about all the things that she might
not be able to do, and I tried to comfort
her the best I could.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Aaron was in shock. His grandfather, Harlan, had died of
multiple sclerosis, so Aaron knew how difficult MS could be.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I heard the horror stories from my dad about how
bad it was for Harlan. I had known a couple
of friends that had at MS and had he lives
cut pretty short. I had a thumb in the air
guess of her life expectancy being somewhere in the fifties,
maybe if she was already diagnosed before we had turned thirty.
(15:11):
I was just devastated.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Their shared dreams for the future, house kids, growing old
together crumbled in front of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I didn't know what to do besides just hold her
and tell her. I promised to help her through whatever
came up. I was going to do whatever it took.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Even though it only been dating a year. Aaron was
committed to staying by her side whatever their future held.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I never had the thought of not committing to it.
It didn't scare me off. I was in for the
long haul at this point. I wanted to be there
for her. This is the reality now, so let's figure
it out. Let's do what we can.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Sabrina had an undergraduate degree in public health.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So I kind of let her take the driver's seat
as far as learning about the disease and letting me
know what she needed from me to assist.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Sabrina's first symptom was back pain, but over time she
started experiencing other symptoms as.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Well, generalized soreness and limb pain, and casual exercise from
like walking the dog was starting to bother her, So
walking the dog became entirely by responsibility.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Then standing at all became a challenge.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So I took over a larger share of the housework
and basically all the cooking. It was a little exhausting.
Quite frankly, it's kind of just lucky I was still
in my late twenties and I kind of still had
the energy to do all of that. A lot of caffeine,
a lot of sugar.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Aarin did everything he could to make Sabrina as happy
as possible during this incredibly challenging time.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I was paying for a lot of makeup, a lot
of clothes. She had very particular tastes, as my dad
liked to say, she has champagne taste in a beer pocketbook.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Sabrina was working at a nonprofit, but her symptoms quickly
began interfering with her job.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
She's been calling out of work a couple times a
month at this point. One day she calls me up
and says, well, I got fired.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Aaron was immediately defensive of Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
What the hell happened? They can't just fire you if
you're sick.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Sabrina explained that she had called out of work because
she was having a high pain day. But then she
had to run an errand that couldn't wait, and while
she was out, she ran into her boss.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Her boss had seen her out shopping on a day
when she was supposedly in so much pain she couldn't
get out of bed.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Aarin was frustrated.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
If you're calling out, you need to stay home.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
He told her to just let him handle the erin
next time.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
After she's fired from her job, she's basically stuck at home.
She talks about going back to medical school. I'm very
encouraging of this because she needs to have a job
for us to function as a unit. I don't make
enough money to support us both forever.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sabrina is still needed a few more college credits before
she could apply to medical school, so she enrolled in
community college classes. Aarin was now the sole provider for
both of them, but Sabrina's spending habits didn't slow down.
Aaron was left scrambling to cover the costs.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I end up getting payday loans and spending a good
chunk of every payday going to each payday loan place
to pay the loan off, and then immediately loan the
money again.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
He watched his credit card bills stack up. Sabrina was
still spending money on luxury items like makeup and clothes
while they were struggling to make ends meet. It was
unsustainable and stressful. Aaron confronted Sabrina about her spending habits
a few times.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It usually broke down into a lot of tears and
promising to do better and saying I should be able
to live comfortably.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Sabrina's symptoms were progressing and she wanted to make the
most of the years where her quality of life was
still relatively good. She wanted to experience the world and
fill her days with things that brought her joy. Aaron
wanted that too, but the financial pressure on him was mounting.
He was also paying for all of Sabrina's medications.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
After losing her job with the nonprofit, Sabrina struggled to
maintain insurance. She would tell me that, oh, I've got
my insurance set up. It's fun and you can go in.
It won't cost that much.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
But when Aaron went to the pharmacy and they ran
Sabrina's insurance, it often didn't go through.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So it goes from twenty thirty bucks to three hundred
four hundred bucks. That was several hundred dollars that I
usually didn't have every month. But I have to have
the medication today because we're out. Medication is not something
you can live without.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Aaron did whatever had to be done to make
sure Sabrina got her medications on time.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It often came down to borrowing money from people, or
paying bills late, or the internet gets shut off for
a few days, having the rent check bounce, just to
make sure that the medications were filled on the day
they needed to be filled.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
As the months went on, Sabrina's MS symptoms worsened. She
began using a cane for walking assistance. It was harder
for her to keep her balance, and she began fing frequently.
Her soreness and limp pain became more severe.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Because of all the pain, she was having a lot
of trouble keeping her energy level up. Seeing her struggles
with the illness was definitely a major challenge for me.
I didn't want to see her in pain. I wanted
to try and make her life as easy as possible
because I knew that this was going to be a
pretty rough ride for her.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
He offered to support her by coming to doctor's appointments
with her, but the scheduling never worked out. In the
middle of a very challenging time, there was a bright spot.
Aaron got his dream job.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I got a job as a software engineer at Nintendo.
This is my dream company. I got business cards that
say Nintendo and my name. It's a huge deal to me.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Aaron and Sabrina had moved out of the house with
his friends and into an apartment of their own. On
top of starting his new job, Aarin was spending hours
each day taking care of Sabrina. It was difficult.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
By this point, we're much less romantic partners and much
more caregiver and receiver. I did all the dishes, I
did all the cooking. We don't really have that romantical
relationship anymore. We're always broke. We're not going out on dates.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Aaron was caring for Sabrina financially and handling their household
chores because her MS symptoms made physical labor painful. But
Sabrina's quality of life was still good enough for her
to spend time with friends and have independents, and so
her personal spending never slowed.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
She was going out with friends and often spending money.
We didn't have. She's buying new clothes all the time,
spending one hundred plus bucks a month at the map
counter and Sephora packages from different delivery companies somehow magically
getting paid for. And this is on top of all
the medications.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Aaron felt powerless to stop Sabrina's spending. As her MS
symptoms worsened, so did her mental health. She began struggling
with suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
At first, it was, well, if we can't refill my
meds on time and I have to go without a
couple days, maybe I should just kill myself so I
don't have to experience the pain for that week until
a paycheck shows up.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It felt like all of Sabrina's safety and stability rested
on Aerin. He worked hard to cover all of her
medication costs, but his paychecks weren't enough and he was
going into debt to afford everything. Then, Sabrina began calling
Aaron while he was at work. Usually there was something
specific that she needed.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Often it was medication related, but it started to expand
beyond that. There was an occasion where suicide was threatened
if I couldn't come off with five hundred dollars to
buy a custom cause play outfit for convention.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Sabrina's calls began taking up more and more of his workday.
She was in such a delicate mental state he felt
like it was unsafe to leave her alone.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
All of this basically just drove me into a level
of depression and exhaustion that I became unrecognizable to a
lot of friends and family. I was always eating cheap garbage.
There were a lot of times where I skipped lunch
at work for a week or more because I didn't
have the five bucks I needed to go get lunch.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The cost of Sabrina's MS medications was impossible to keep
up with. Aaron tried everything.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I filled up several credit cards trying to cover everything.
I basically sold everything I owned. I had a video
game collection that in today's dollars probably would be worth
twenty five to thirty thousand dollars, and I was selling
it for pennies on the dollar because there was something
(25:05):
we needed now. It was always I need a couple
hundred bucks, now, I needed buy medication tomorrow. I need
to make sure the rent check doesn't bounce again.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Aarin was living in a survival state, always trying to
keep up with the most urgent need. Then, after Aarin
had been racking up medical debt for a year, Sabrina
heard about a new treatment from her doctor. It was
a glimmer of hope.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
The experimental intervenous treatment for MS came up. The first time.
The medication was called interfere on.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It was the early two thousands and there weren't as
many treatment options available for MS as there are today.
For the first time and months, Sabrina seemed optimistic this
treatment could be the key to getting their lives back
on track. Instead of the weekly and monthly payments. This
treatment lasted a few months. Her doctors were hopeful that
(26:03):
interferon could help manage all of her symptoms instead of
needing multiple prescriptions. It had the possibility to majorly improve
her quality of life.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
If I could pay seven or eight hundred dollars every
couple months, then we wouldn't need to be buying all
these other medications. This experimental treatment would be able to
cover everything, or at least make a significant difference in
her well being, possibly to the point where she might
even be able to go back to work. It felt
(26:35):
like a god said the possibility that we could actually
start moving forward as equal partners again and instead of
just me taking care for all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
The way they were living was unsustainable, so Aaron was
willing to take a risk.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I decided to move forward with it. I got some
help from my parents to help start the initial treatments.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
He kept offering to attend Sabrina's appointments with her, but
it never worked out.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
They were always scheduled in the middle of the morning
or in the middle of the afternoon on a workday,
and I took time off to try and join her appointment.
Oh they had to cancel and reschedule.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Aaron had put everything he had on the line to
help Sabrina access this treatment. It was becoming more and
more concerning to him that he'd never spoken to a
doctor about it directly. Every medical update he heard came
through Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I had been talking to my dad about it, and
he told me that I should start asking for receipts
since I could never make it to an appointment.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So Aaron asked Sabrina to see a receipt for one
of her interfere on treatments, and when he did, something
strange happened.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I could kind of see panic on her face for
about a half a second, but.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The panic quickly disappeared and she told.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Him, sure, I'll get you on. That became a week
or more, and than over a month into Oh, it's
time for the next treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Aaron knew something wasn't right, but he was starting to
lose the will to argue with Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I think at this point I had just been beaten
down emotionally so badly that I kind of just stopped caring.
I didn't even have the strength to fight and argue
about just basic information.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
At this point, Aaron and Sabrina had been together for
five years, and it had been four years since she
was diagnosed with MS. Paying for her m's treatments for
years had been a huge strain on Erin. He was
racking up debt and his mental health was getting worse.
But Aaron knew that having MS was a much bigger nightmare.
(28:49):
He had watched Sabrina suffer for years, and the idea
of doubting any part of her experience made Aaron feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Who lies about being this sick.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
One day, Sabrina approached Arin and told him that her
doctors were recommending she'd start a new version of interfere On,
one that she'd only need every six to nine months,
but there was a catch. It cost eight thousand dollars
for each treatment. She was planning to ask a mutual
friend of theirs for help. Up until now, Aaron had
(29:20):
been paying for all the interfere On treatments himself.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Not having to panic about it at this point was
such a priority that I agreed to go along with it.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Aaron and Sabrina went to their friend's house to ask
for his financial support.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
The friend brings up, okay, so you want to borrow
fifteen thousand dollars and I had to hide the shock
on my face because suddenly the number had changed. I
didn't want to mess it up by confronting Sabrina about
it in front of him, So after we leave, I
confront her in the car about what's this extra seven
(29:57):
thousand dollars for? And she tells me, well, I want
to start school up again. There's a couple thousand bucks
for that. I need to replace my computer, and you
know I can only take a top of the line MacBook,
so that's another three or four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
By this point, Aaron did not trust Sabrina to handle
money responsibly.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
The first thing I told her was, I know how
you are about spending money. If you're going to do this,
go do the medical treatment first. Don't go buy the MacBook,
don't pay for school stuff. You go do the medical
treatment first. She said, yes, yes, of course, of course
I'll do the medical treatment first.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
But Aarin didn't feel comfortable just taking Sabrina's word for it.
He needed to see for himself how she was spending
this money.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Her computer was broken, so she had been doing some
of her work on my computer. That meant that she
had saved her bank log in on my computer. So
after she deposited the check, I started watching the balance
of the account.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Every day he checked to see if she had made
the eight thousand dollars payment for interfere On.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And every day I would open the bank account and
see a couple hundred bucks get nibbled away, and then
big purchase at the max store, went to the mall
and spent fifteen hundred dollars on clothes and makeup.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Aaron watched in horror as the bank account slowly drained.
There was still some part of him that expected her
to pay for the treatment. For a while, there was
still enough in the account eight thousand dollars to afford it.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
It's getting smaller and smaller. I'm not seeing the big
expenditure for the treatment. And then one day we've passed
below the line of what the treatment costs. That was
the whole reason we were supposed to borrow this money
in the first place. And she's spending two hundred bucks
a week on my little pony phone game micro transactions.
(32:02):
It gets below half of what she supposedly needed for
this treatment. And then it finally gets below a thousand dollars,
and that was the day I kind of snapped.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Aaron had woken up before Sabrina to walk the dogs.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I went in the kitchen. I grabbed a bunch of
black garriage bags from under the sink. She was still
in bed.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
He woke her up, handed her the trash bags, and
told her to start packing her things.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
At first, she tried to deny that she had spent
the money, and that's when I revealed that no, I
had actually been watching her bank account. And that's when
the whopper to end all whoppers comes out of her mouth.
She tells me that she's been working the day shift
at a strip club while I've been at work at Nintendo.
(32:55):
She doesn't have a receipt for it, but she did
get the treatment, and that's what she spent her stripper
money on.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Aarin wasn't buying it.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Honestly, I think this was the last time I ever
believed a word she said. She managed to get me
to not throw her out with crocodile tears, claiming she
would get me receipts.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Aaron knew he should walk away from the relationship, but
the reality was a lot more complicated.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
An emotional abusive relationship is like a cult of two people.
The cult leader no longer had control over me, but
I also didn't have the emotional and financial strength to leave.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
At this point, Sabrina suggested opening their relationship and seeing
other people. Aaron agreed. In the months that followed, Sabrina
was still adamant that she had paid for the interfere
on treatment.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I could never get documented proof of it. No receipts,
no information from the doctor, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Aarin was trying to find a way to leave the relationship,
but he was worried about what would happen to Sabrina
when he left. She had been dependent on him for
six years now.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I still believed that she had MS, but that she
just wasn't nearly as bad as what she led on
because I had seen enough visual indicators to convince me
that she was at least impaired. Somehow, it felt like
she was just taking advantage of my family's history with
(34:30):
MS to try and squeeze as much money out of
my family as possible.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Since Erin and Sabrina had opened their relationship, he started
seeing someone named Kia. He loved spending time with her.
She was like a breath of fresh air. One night,
while Aaron was out on a date with Kia, he
got an alarming text from Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Sabrina had told me that she was in the bathroom,
had taken a whole bottle of pills.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sabrina had made a suicide d tempt. Aaron began to panic.
He knew Sabrina often lied in exaggerated things, but if
there was any chance at all that this was true,
he had to help her.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So Keia and I rushed home. We parked outside.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Well, Aaron and Kia were still in the car. The
front door of the house opened.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
And Sabrina walks out with two of her friends to
go out to dinner.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
She didn't see him in the car. She walked right
past him. For Aaron, that moment changed everything.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
This was purely a power play to try and keep
my attention.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Aarin was starting to realize that his girlfriend, Sabrina was
lying about the severity of her MS symptoms to get
financial support from him and his friends. Aaron hadn't found
a way to leave the relationship. He was still worried
about her physical and mental health. One night, Sabrina texted
him that she had attempted suicide and locked herself in
(36:23):
the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So Keian I rushed home, parked outside, and while we're
sitting out there, Sabrina walks out with two of her
friends to go out to dinner.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Erin was scared that Sabrina's life was at risk and
she needed immediate medical attention, but here she was dressed
up to go out, laughing with her friends.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
This was purely a power play to try and keep
my attention. After Sabrina came home, I told her that
I saw her leaving, and she tried to tell me
that they were taking her to the hospital. I told
her I knew that was bullshit.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
For the last five years of their relationship, Sabrina had
been convincing Aaron that she was on the brink of
collapse mentally and physically, and that he was the only
person who could keep her safe. But now the extent
of her deception was becoming clear to Aaron. This wasn't
just exaggeration and bad spending habits. This was emotional and
(37:24):
financial abuse.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
The following weekend, I invited one of my good friends
over to kind of steal my resolve, and I sat
Sabrina down on the couch in the living room and
I told her we are not in a relationship anymore.
I'm not paying for everything anymore. I'm done.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
The next weekend, while Sabrina was out of the house,
Aaron's friends helped him move out.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I read at a due apartment across town, where she
didn't know where I lived. I think she knew it
was coming. She knew she was busted for the fake
suicide attempt, and she had just resigned herself to the
fact that the spigot that was Aarons turned off.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Sabrina and Aaron still had a lot of mutual friends.
After the breakup, Aaron distanced himself from their social group.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
She told a lot of people that I was physically abusive,
financially abusive, that I was the one pissing away all
of our money.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Aaron was isolated from his community and left to deal
with the impact of years of financial and emotional abuse.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I was left with significant psychological trauma that I, unfortunately
didn't take the time to properly process.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
A few years past, Aaron was trying to rebuild a
base of stability in his life and pay off the
debt he mounted while taking care of Sabrina. One day,
Aaron was on Facebook when he saw that one of
his old friends had posted a GoFundMe for Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I clicked on the link and gave it a read.
She was in Japan. Someone had cleaned out her accounts
while she was in Japan, and she was stuck there
with no return ticket and no money. I posted her
apply to the GoFundMe, saying that if you're going to
start raising money for Sabrina, how about you start raising
(39:31):
money to pay all the people back that she took
money from and never paid back.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
The organizer of the GoFundMe criticized him for calling Sabrina's
character into question. His concern was shut down in the comments,
but other people had started catching on to Sabrina's lies.
The friends she was hanging out with in Japan. They
collected evidence then posted their side of the story to Facebook.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Sabrina posted that she had spent the day at the
Bullet train station trying to figure out what the best
time to jump in front of the train was. In reality,
she had spent that day at Disneyland, Tokyo, spending hundreds
or one thousands of dollars and at the same time
pleading poverty on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Finally, Sabrina was exposed. The truth was out there, and
there was no way for her to talk her way
out of it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Over the next week, I probably fielded a dozen or
more apologies. Sabrina's scam worked great until people actually started
talking to each other, and then it all fell apart.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Other people began to come forward, sharing their own stories
of Sabrina borrowing money and never paying them back.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It felt gratifying to know that I wasn't the only one,
and at the same time I was racked with guilt
that if I had figured some of this stuff out sooner,
maybe a lot of these other people wouldn't have lost
all this money.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
One day, something unexpected happened.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I'm at work at Nintendo, just plugging away, and I
get an email notification on my smartphone. I looked down
and it's from the FBI ari information about Sabrina Taylor.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
The FBI was investigating Sabrina for fraud.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
I gave the agent a call and we spent about
an hour going through all of the different parts of
my time with Sabrina, her MS treatments and diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
The FBI kept Aaron up to date on Sabrina's case.
She was charged with four counts of wire fraud. She
appeared in court for the first time in November of
twenty twenty one. After that, Aaron was able to see
the case the FBI had built against Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
It wasn't until I saw some of the evidence that
I was one hundred percent certain that she had never
had MS. They had forged documents using doctor's letter heads.
They had statements from multiple doctors that they'd tested her
multiple times that she never had MS. One hundred percent
(42:19):
of it was a lie.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Erin had been paying for drugs like Gaba pentten under
the impression that they were critical in managing Sabrina's MS symptoms,
but gaba penton can be used to treat a variety
of more mild conditions. After learning the truth about Sabrina's health,
Erin did some research and learned that she was taking
around three times over the maximum recommended dose of gaba penttin.
(42:45):
We don't know what she was using it for, but
the drug is often used off label for anxiety, and
if misused, it can be addictive. Sabrina Taylor defrauded numerous
victims out of over six hundred thousand dollars. She stole
this money not from strangers, but from people who trusted her,
who were concerned about her diagnosis, and who were willing
(43:08):
to make compromises in their own lives to help her
afford treatment and care. On July one, twenty twenty two,
she fled guilty to one count of wire fraud for
a scheme to defraud friends and acquaintances. Her health wasn't
the only thing she fabricated. Sabrina's entire identity was a lie.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
She never worked for the Gates Foundation, she never graduated
from U dub and she'd never even gotten close to
medical school and has mostly lived her life off the
generosity of others.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
At this point, there was one question all of her
victims wanted an answer.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
To where was the money going.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
It was the kind of thing that was impossible to
understand unless you watched it up close. Like Aaron had
watching Brina's bank account drain transaction by transaction, he knew
where the money went.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
The truth is the money was just going to traveling
and shopping and not having to work. She was trying
to live the lifestyle she thought she deserved and didn't
care how many people she had to leach off of
to make that lifestyle happen.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
When Sabrina pled guilty, the US Attorney's Office for the
Western District of Washington released a statement about her crimes.
We've had a voice actor read sections of it.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Taylor engaged in a sustained and calculated course of conduct
that preyed upon her victim's best emotions. Taylor used a
substantial portion of the defrauded funds to pay for luxuries,
such as almost sixty thousand dollars from multiple trips to
Japan and Korea, nearly thirty eight thousand dollars for online
purchases from Amazon, and Etsy more than twenty nine thousand
(45:02):
for clothing and nearly sixteen thousand dollars for makeup. Taylor
met some of the people she defrauded online, using shared
interests such as Japanese anime, comic books, or video games
to establish a relationship.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Sabrina's sentencing hearing was six months later, in January of
twenty twenty three. It was the first time Aaron had
seen her in over five years. He delivered a statement
at the hearing.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I laid out a lot of the trauma that had
come with everything that my dad had basically worked an
extra year or two passed when he thought he was
going to retire to try and cover all of my debts. Essentially,
I told the judge that one of her favorite tactics
(45:52):
was to threaten to commit suicide to get people to
do what she wanted when she wanted it done. And
I think because of what I said, the judge rescinded
her bail and sent her into confinement immediately because he
did not want her to try to repeat that pattern.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Sabrina was sentenced to twenty seven months in prison. Assistant
United States Attorney Joe Silvio released a sentencing memo. We've
had a voice actor read part of it.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
Taylor carried out an extensive Frond scheme using deceit and
deception that preyed upon humankind's better angels. Several of Taylor's
victims suffered substantial financial hardship, some likely will never be
made whole financially. Equally as important, Taylor exploited and betrayed
the trust of each of her victims, and many of
(46:46):
Taylor's victims will continue to pay an emotional toll for
many years to come.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I was definitely a lot less anxious during the time
that I knew she was in prison. She has been
returned to this Seattle area. I know she's still around here.
Luckily I haven't run into her, but that's definitely something
that's on the back of my mind.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Even though Sabrina isn't in Aaron's life anymore, her financial
abuse will affect him for a long time. It's hard
to know the exact number that Aaron spent on Sabrina,
but he estimates it was at least one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. His debt severely impacted his credit and
he'll be paying it off for years to come.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
The total number I ended up owing my mom was
just short of one hundred thousand dollars. I've been paying
back what I could in the years since, and there
is no way I'll be able to pay my mom
back before she dies. I'm one of the lucky ones.
I had someone that I could borrow that kind of
money off of to get everything straightened out. I very
(47:52):
easily could have had to declare bankruptcy over this.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Sabrina was ordered to pay some of her victim's restitution,
but Aaron's name was not included in the list because
of statute of limitations. To Aaron, this isn't a story
about how we shouldn't trust others.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
She is the outlier. For every Sabrina that's out there,
there are ten thousand people who actually need the help.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
To Aaron, this is a story about how we should
trust ourselves.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
If you feel like you're being taken advantage of, or
if you feel like you're doing everything for this other
person and struggling to keep your head above water, start
asking for proof. That was really what unraveled Sabrina's entire
con was somebody asked for the receipts.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
The experience has given Aaron a new perspective on financial
and emotional abuse.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
This kind of thing happens to a lot more people
than anyone realizes, and it's not something you should hold
against anybody when it happens to them. The same kind
of thing can happen to anybody under the right circumstances.
I am a lot slower to trust people than I
(49:12):
used to be, but it hasn't kept me from trusting
people at all.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
We end every weekly episode with the same question, why
do you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
These things do happen to men, and you're not less
of a man for this having happened to you. And
I really think that we need to be just as
honest as the women that are coming forward with stories
like these. If this story helps one person get out
(49:50):
or helps their friend get out of a toxic, abusive relationship,
then this was all worth it.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
How in the world could someone stoop that low and
go to that extreme? Were you too cowardly?
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Just tell me the truth.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Please note that we are not
a mental health organization. If you are in crisis or
currently experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local
(50:52):
help or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations
that offer immediate support. In our show, notes included a
list of US based resources. You can follow us on
Instagram at Betrayal pod or find me at It's Andrea Gunning.
To access our newsletter and additional content, and to connect
(51:12):
with the Betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal dot
substack dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five star reviews go a long way. Big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
(51:33):
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is
Monique Lebord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer
(51:54):
is Leah Jablow. Production management by Kristin Melcurie, Booking support
by Curry Richmond, Voice acting by Todd Gans and Carrie Hartman.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Treessica Crincheck. Audio
editing by Tanner Robbins, with additional editing and mixing by
Matt Delvecchio. Portrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library
(52:17):
provided by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts
Hi, everyone, I have something exciting to share with you.
Betrayal finally has merch. This is something I've been wanting
to do for a long time. Every piece has been
designed and curated for our Betrayal community. We've got mugs, shirts, stickers,
and a guided Betrayal journal filled with thoughtful prompts. Whether
(00:22):
it's for yourself or as a gift for someone you
know who loves the show, these pieces help support the
work we do. Visit Betrayal podcast dot shop to explore
the full collection. Pre Orders are open now. Hey everyone,
just a note before we begin. This episode discusses suicidal ideation.
Please take care when listening. Betrayal Weekly is officially back.
(00:50):
This is season three, episode one. Each episode tells a
unique story of deception and broken trust, and each storyteller
has found their own path forward. Whether you've been with
us from the beginning or you're just tuning in, welcome.
We are starting this season with Aaron's story.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm at work, just plugging away, and I get an
email notification on my smartphone. I look down and it's
from the FBI ari information about Sabrina Taylor.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
My name is Aaron Ward. I'm a software engineer working
in video games.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Aaron spent his whole career working on popular video games.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I worked on Halo Infinite, I worked on Minecraft. I've
worked on a bunch of little projects for Nintendo. One
of my minor claims to fame is I had the
number one played game on Nick dot com in two
thousand and eight, which was SpongeBob SquarePants refremble.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Aarin's a third generation computer nerd. He grew up in
rural Ohio with his siblings and parents who worked in
computer science.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
My parents were what I would call upper middle class,
both white collar, working professionals.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Aaron's parents made enough money for their families to live comfortably,
but a lot of people in their community struggle to
make ends meet. His parents tried to give back wherever
they could.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My parents always volunteered a lot. They were very generous,
and they also helped lead a lot of local fundraisers.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
His parents taught him to be generous with his money
and his time.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
My parents were a lot about honesty and a lot
about trying to help people.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That needed it. Aaron spent most of his free time
playing video games or reading about them.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I was a really big Nintendo fan, and I had
a subscription to Nintendo Power.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Nintendo Power was a magazine all about Nintendo games. It
had comics, game reviews, and articles. Aaron read every issue,
and when he was in fifth grade, he read an
article that sparked his interest.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
They mentioned the opening of the DigiPen campus.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
DigiPen is a college near Seattle that specializes in video
game design. Even though Aaron was only in fifth grade,
I knew very.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Early on that's really what I wanted to do with
my life.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Getting into DigiPen became Aaron's life goal.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
One of our freshman year activities when I was in
high school was writing three things that you wanted to
try to accomplish in your life. My three things were
working on a triple A video game title, graduating from DigiPen,
and being a Jeopardy champion.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
As of this recording, Aaron is not a Jeopardy Champion yet,
but he's accomplished his other two goals.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Because senior year.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
In high school, he was accepted into DigiPen. He left
the farms and factories of rural Ohio and jumped headfirst
into a world of video games. It was exciting and
Aaron learned a lot, But DigiPen had one big shortcoming.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
DigiPen has a ninety five to five male to female ratio,
so DigiPen was four years of having almost no female socialization.
As someone who had mostly female friends in high school,
that was a big change for me.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Aaron noticed how being in a male dominated environment was
impacting the people around him, and he didn't like what
he saw.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I had seen a lot of my peers at Digjapan
starting to go down that path of misogyny because they
weren't being around women in their day to day lives,
so the only women they were exposed to were actresses
or people in the media.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Aaron didn't want to go down that path, so he
read books and worked with his therapist to learn what
healthy relationships really looked like.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
One thing I learned is to try to not be
transactional in relationships. It's not about I do this for
you, you do this thing for me. Relationships need to be
about the broader scope of caring for each other and
being there for each other when stuff is hard.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
After graduating from college, Aaron and some friends moved into
an apartment together. He was working as a video game
programmer and loved the life he'd built. He felt ready
to meet someone and decided to give dating in Seattle
a try.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I was not super outgoing. I was not a go
out to the bars and meet someone kind of person,
and that's when I turned to internet dating. At the
time two thousand and seven, the iPhone is barely a thing.
There's no tender, so what I'm left with option wise
(06:23):
are Craiglist personals.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Craigslist Personals was a subsection of Craigslist for people who
were looking for relationships, romantic connections, or friendships. You could
post an ad about yourself and what you were looking for.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I had noticed there was a glut of men looking
for women ads, so I mostly focused on responding to
the few women that had posted their ads up.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
One day, while scrolling through Craigslist, Aaron saw an ad
that caught his attention.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
The headline of it was about how white guys are
scared to date black women, and it intrigued me enough
to at least read it. In the ad, she talked
about how she was a nerdy black woman who grew
up in a largely white Midwestern area, and how the
(07:11):
white men of the Seattle area had never seemed to
approach her or approached her in very poor ways.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Aaron responded to the ad, apologizing on behalf of the
white nerdy men of Seattle. The author of the post
thought his response was funny and wrote him back.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I found out her name was Sabrina. We exchanged pictures
over email and had a couple of emails back and
forth before we decided to go out on a date
to the local Athleash dog park.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
On the day of their date, Aaron headed to the
dog park feeling nervous but excited.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
She showed up looking just like her pictures with her
pet Dalmatian Satchel, who was very sweet, and we ended
up taking a nice long hour plus walk where we
both went through our lives and the things we have
in common. She grew up in Iowa, I grew up
in Ohio, so we both grew up in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Aaron immediately felt relaxed around Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
We also talked about all of our different nerdy interests,
video games, anime, television shows. We were both big sailor
moon fans. We had both played basically every Nintendo game
that had ever been made, Mario's, Zelda's Final Fantasies.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
After their first date, Aaron couldn't wait to see Sabrina again.
He invited her to hang out with him and his
friends at a pub they liked on the east side
of Seattle. He was a little nervous would Sabrina click
with his friends, but as soon as she showed up,
his nerves melted away.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
She got along with basically everybody. She is magnetic and
dras a lot of people around her to listen to
her talk about whatever she's talking about. She's definitely the
kind of person that can make friends very easily in
a crowd.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Aaron loved hanging out with his friends with Sabrina by
his side.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
The fact that she was so charismatic was excriefly attractive
to me. It really helped fill in some of my
gaps of getting conversations started and breaking the ice socially
with new people.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
After that night at the pub, Aaron and Sabrina had
their first kiss.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
We had great physical chemistry as well as having a
lot of things in common, so that really felt like
it was kind of a meant to be situation.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They started spending more and more time together. Soon they
were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. They had long conversations about
their backgrounds and dreams for the future.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
She was an intern for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
and she was finishing up her double bachelors in public
health and women's studies, with her end goal being becoming
a doctor. She had big plans for her life going forward.
That was something that was attractive to me. In a
possibly forever partner.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
With Sabrina, the world felt big.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
We went on a couple of little trips to the coast,
and being with her just really got me out of
my shell and got me out of my apartment with
my roommates and out doing things, even if it was
just shopping or wandering around Pye Place Market.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And of course, they loved playing video games together.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
She would have a game that she really liked the
story of wasn't quite dexterous enough to beat, and so
she'd get us started and I would do the later
harder levels for her so we could both see the
ending of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They were on the same team.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Sabrina really made me feel seen and appreciated in a
way that I hadn't been for a while. She always
made me feel like I was a priority in her life,
and I tried to do the same.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They began to talk about their long term goals.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I wanted the stereotypical white picket fence wife, two and
a half kids, et cetera. She was looking toward medical school,
so kids and getting married and stuff that was down
the road a bit, and I was okay with that.
At this point, we're still early to mid twenties, so
(11:37):
we've got some time.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Aaron and his friends moved into a new house together
in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
A month after me and my roommates had moved into
the house, Sabrina comes to me and says that her
apartment is going condo. Obviously, she can't afford to buy it,
and she's not making a lot of money as an
intern at the Gates Foundation, and she's still trying to
finish up that last month or two of school. She
(12:06):
basically doesn't have anywhere to go, so.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Sabrina moved in with them.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
I was excited to move in with my girlfriend, even
if it was on a slightly faster schedule than I
was planning on in my head. I was happy to
have her with me every day, waking up with me,
going to bed with me, just beg here out all
the time.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
In true Sabrina fashion, she made the transition easy. She
brought a lot of laughter and fun to the house.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
She got along really well with my roommates. She integrated
very quickly into the friend group. It was just a
lot of fun to have everybody living together. You know,
we all played rock band together, and we could kind
of be loud and crazy because we weren't sharing a
wall with anybody.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But living in the same house also meant seeing each
other's daily struggles up close. Sabrina had been dealing with
chronic back pain. Aaron saw just how much of a
toll it was taking on her.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Had gotten bad enough that she had to call out
of work a couple of days for it. So I
encouraged her to go to the doctor and you know,
kind of get this checked out.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Sabrina agreed. The day of her appointment arrived, and when
Aaron came home from work, he was anxious to hear
how it went.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I come home and she's seated on the couch, looking
very defeated. So I sit down and I hold her hand,
and that's when she tells me her doctor had diagnosed
her as having multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
When Aaron and his girlfriends Sabrina, moved in together, Aaron
realized how much her chronic back pain was impacting her
day to day life. He encouraged her to go to
the doctor's and she did. When she came back from
her appointment, Erin could tell right away that something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So I sit down and I hold her hand, and
I asked her what happened that day, and that's when
she tells me that her doctor had diagnosed her as
having multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Aaron held her close as Sabrina began to cry.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
She started talking about all the things that she might
not be able to do, and I tried to comfort
her the best I could.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Aaron was in shock. His grandfather, Harlan, had died of
multiple sclerosis, so Aaron knew how difficult MS could be.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I heard the horror stories from my dad about how
bad it was for Harlan. I had known a couple
of friends that had at MS and had he lives
cut pretty short. I had a thumb in the air
guess of her life expectancy being somewhere in the fifties,
maybe if she was already diagnosed before we had turned thirty.
(15:11):
I was just devastated.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Their shared dreams for the future, house kids, growing old
together crumbled in front of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I didn't know what to do besides just hold her
and tell her. I promised to help her through whatever
came up. I was going to do whatever it took.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Even though it only been dating a year. Aaron was
committed to staying by her side whatever their future held.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I never had the thought of not committing to it.
It didn't scare me off. I was in for the
long haul at this point. I wanted to be there
for her. This is the reality now, so let's figure
it out. Let's do what we can.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Sabrina had an undergraduate degree in public health.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So I kind of let her take the driver's seat
as far as learning about the disease and letting me
know what she needed from me to assist.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Sabrina's first symptom was back pain, but over time she
started experiencing other symptoms as.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Well, generalized soreness and limb pain, and casual exercise from
like walking the dog was starting to bother her, So
walking the dog became entirely by responsibility.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Then standing at all became a challenge.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So I took over a larger share of the housework
and basically all the cooking. It was a little exhausting.
Quite frankly, it's kind of just lucky I was still
in my late twenties and I kind of still had
the energy to do all of that. A lot of caffeine,
a lot of sugar.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Aarin did everything he could to make Sabrina as happy
as possible during this incredibly challenging time.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I was paying for a lot of makeup, a lot
of clothes. She had very particular tastes, as my dad
liked to say, she has champagne taste in a beer pocketbook.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Sabrina was working at a nonprofit, but her symptoms quickly
began interfering with her job.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
She's been calling out of work a couple times a
month at this point. One day she calls me up
and says, well, I got fired.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Aaron was immediately defensive of Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
What the hell happened? They can't just fire you if
you're sick.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Sabrina explained that she had called out of work because
she was having a high pain day. But then she
had to run an errand that couldn't wait, and while
she was out, she ran into her boss.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Her boss had seen her out shopping on a day
when she was supposedly in so much pain she couldn't
get out of bed.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Aarin was frustrated.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
If you're calling out, you need to stay home.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
He told her to just let him handle the erin
next time.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
After she's fired from her job, she's basically stuck at home.
She talks about going back to medical school. I'm very
encouraging of this because she needs to have a job
for us to function as a unit. I don't make
enough money to support us both forever.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sabrina is still needed a few more college credits before
she could apply to medical school, so she enrolled in
community college classes. Aarin was now the sole provider for
both of them, but Sabrina's spending habits didn't slow down.
Aaron was left scrambling to cover the costs.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I end up getting payday loans and spending a good
chunk of every payday going to each payday loan place
to pay the loan off, and then immediately loan the
money again.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
He watched his credit card bills stack up. Sabrina was
still spending money on luxury items like makeup and clothes
while they were struggling to make ends meet. It was
unsustainable and stressful. Aaron confronted Sabrina about her spending habits
a few times.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It usually broke down into a lot of tears and
promising to do better and saying I should be able
to live comfortably.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Sabrina's symptoms were progressing and she wanted to make the
most of the years where her quality of life was
still relatively good. She wanted to experience the world and
fill her days with things that brought her joy. Aaron
wanted that too, but the financial pressure on him was mounting.
He was also paying for all of Sabrina's medications.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
After losing her job with the nonprofit, Sabrina struggled to
maintain insurance. She would tell me that, oh, I've got
my insurance set up. It's fun and you can go in.
It won't cost that much.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
But when Aaron went to the pharmacy and they ran
Sabrina's insurance, it often didn't go through.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So it goes from twenty thirty bucks to three hundred
four hundred bucks. That was several hundred dollars that I
usually didn't have every month. But I have to have
the medication today because we're out. Medication is not something
you can live without.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Aaron did whatever had to be done to make
sure Sabrina got her medications on time.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It often came down to borrowing money from people, or
paying bills late, or the internet gets shut off for
a few days, having the rent check bounce, just to
make sure that the medications were filled on the day
they needed to be filled.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
As the months went on, Sabrina's MS symptoms worsened. She
began using a cane for walking assistance. It was harder
for her to keep her balance, and she began fing frequently.
Her soreness and limp pain became more severe.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Because of all the pain, she was having a lot
of trouble keeping her energy level up. Seeing her struggles
with the illness was definitely a major challenge for me.
I didn't want to see her in pain. I wanted
to try and make her life as easy as possible
because I knew that this was going to be a
pretty rough ride for her.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
He offered to support her by coming to doctor's appointments
with her, but the scheduling never worked out. In the
middle of a very challenging time, there was a bright spot.
Aaron got his dream job.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I got a job as a software engineer at Nintendo.
This is my dream company. I got business cards that
say Nintendo and my name. It's a huge deal to me.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Aaron and Sabrina had moved out of the house with
his friends and into an apartment of their own. On
top of starting his new job, Aarin was spending hours
each day taking care of Sabrina. It was difficult.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
By this point, we're much less romantic partners and much
more caregiver and receiver. I did all the dishes, I
did all the cooking. We don't really have that romantical
relationship anymore. We're always broke. We're not going out on dates.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Aaron was caring for Sabrina financially and handling their household
chores because her MS symptoms made physical labor painful. But
Sabrina's quality of life was still good enough for her
to spend time with friends and have independents, and so
her personal spending never slowed.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
She was going out with friends and often spending money.
We didn't have. She's buying new clothes all the time,
spending one hundred plus bucks a month at the map
counter and Sephora packages from different delivery companies somehow magically
getting paid for. And this is on top of all
the medications.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Aaron felt powerless to stop Sabrina's spending. As her MS
symptoms worsened, so did her mental health. She began struggling
with suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
At first, it was, well, if we can't refill my
meds on time and I have to go without a
couple days, maybe I should just kill myself so I
don't have to experience the pain for that week until
a paycheck shows up.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It felt like all of Sabrina's safety and stability rested
on Aerin. He worked hard to cover all of her
medication costs, but his paychecks weren't enough and he was
going into debt to afford everything. Then, Sabrina began calling
Aaron while he was at work. Usually there was something
specific that she needed.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Often it was medication related, but it started to expand
beyond that. There was an occasion where suicide was threatened
if I couldn't come off with five hundred dollars to
buy a custom cause play outfit for convention.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Sabrina's calls began taking up more and more of his workday.
She was in such a delicate mental state he felt
like it was unsafe to leave her alone.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
All of this basically just drove me into a level
of depression and exhaustion that I became unrecognizable to a
lot of friends and family. I was always eating cheap garbage.
There were a lot of times where I skipped lunch
at work for a week or more because I didn't
have the five bucks I needed to go get lunch.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The cost of Sabrina's MS medications was impossible to keep
up with. Aaron tried everything.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I filled up several credit cards trying to cover everything.
I basically sold everything I owned. I had a video
game collection that in today's dollars probably would be worth
twenty five to thirty thousand dollars, and I was selling
it for pennies on the dollar because there was something
(25:05):
we needed now. It was always I need a couple
hundred bucks, now, I needed buy medication tomorrow. I need
to make sure the rent check doesn't bounce again.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Aarin was living in a survival state, always trying to
keep up with the most urgent need. Then, after Aarin
had been racking up medical debt for a year, Sabrina
heard about a new treatment from her doctor. It was
a glimmer of hope.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
The experimental intervenous treatment for MS came up. The first time.
The medication was called interfere on.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It was the early two thousands and there weren't as
many treatment options available for MS as there are today.
For the first time and months, Sabrina seemed optimistic this
treatment could be the key to getting their lives back
on track. Instead of the weekly and monthly payments. This
treatment lasted a few months. Her doctors were hopeful that
(26:03):
interferon could help manage all of her symptoms instead of
needing multiple prescriptions. It had the possibility to majorly improve
her quality of life.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
If I could pay seven or eight hundred dollars every
couple months, then we wouldn't need to be buying all
these other medications. This experimental treatment would be able to
cover everything, or at least make a significant difference in
her well being, possibly to the point where she might
even be able to go back to work. It felt
(26:35):
like a god said the possibility that we could actually
start moving forward as equal partners again and instead of
just me taking care for all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
The way they were living was unsustainable, so Aaron was
willing to take a risk.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I decided to move forward with it. I got some
help from my parents to help start the initial treatments.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
He kept offering to attend Sabrina's appointments with her, but
it never worked out.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
They were always scheduled in the middle of the morning
or in the middle of the afternoon on a workday,
and I took time off to try and join her appointment.
Oh they had to cancel and reschedule.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Aaron had put everything he had on the line to
help Sabrina access this treatment. It was becoming more and
more concerning to him that he'd never spoken to a
doctor about it directly. Every medical update he heard came
through Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I had been talking to my dad about it, and
he told me that I should start asking for receipts
since I could never make it to an appointment.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So Aaron asked Sabrina to see a receipt for one
of her interfere on treatments, and when he did, something
strange happened.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I could kind of see panic on her face for
about a half a second, but.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The panic quickly disappeared and she told.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Him, sure, I'll get you on. That became a week
or more, and than over a month into Oh, it's
time for the next treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Aaron knew something wasn't right, but he was starting to
lose the will to argue with Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I think at this point I had just been beaten
down emotionally so badly that I kind of just stopped caring.
I didn't even have the strength to fight and argue
about just basic information.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
At this point, Aaron and Sabrina had been together for
five years, and it had been four years since she
was diagnosed with MS. Paying for her m's treatments for
years had been a huge strain on Erin. He was
racking up debt and his mental health was getting worse.
But Aaron knew that having MS was a much bigger nightmare.
(28:49):
He had watched Sabrina suffer for years, and the idea
of doubting any part of her experience made Aaron feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Who lies about being this sick.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
One day, Sabrina approached Arin and told him that her
doctors were recommending she'd start a new version of interfere On,
one that she'd only need every six to nine months,
but there was a catch. It cost eight thousand dollars
for each treatment. She was planning to ask a mutual
friend of theirs for help. Up until now, Aaron had
(29:20):
been paying for all the interfere On treatments himself.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Not having to panic about it at this point was
such a priority that I agreed to go along with it.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Aaron and Sabrina went to their friend's house to ask
for his financial support.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
The friend brings up, okay, so you want to borrow
fifteen thousand dollars and I had to hide the shock
on my face because suddenly the number had changed. I
didn't want to mess it up by confronting Sabrina about
it in front of him, So after we leave, I
confront her in the car about what's this extra seven
(29:57):
thousand dollars for? And she tells me, well, I want
to start school up again. There's a couple thousand bucks
for that. I need to replace my computer, and you
know I can only take a top of the line MacBook,
so that's another three or four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
By this point, Aaron did not trust Sabrina to handle
money responsibly.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
The first thing I told her was, I know how
you are about spending money. If you're going to do this,
go do the medical treatment first. Don't go buy the MacBook,
don't pay for school stuff. You go do the medical
treatment first. She said, yes, yes, of course, of course
I'll do the medical treatment first.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
But Aarin didn't feel comfortable just taking Sabrina's word for it.
He needed to see for himself how she was spending
this money.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Her computer was broken, so she had been doing some
of her work on my computer. That meant that she
had saved her bank log in on my computer. So
after she deposited the check, I started watching the balance
of the account.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Every day he checked to see if she had made
the eight thousand dollars payment for interfere On.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And every day I would open the bank account and
see a couple hundred bucks get nibbled away, and then
big purchase at the max store, went to the mall
and spent fifteen hundred dollars on clothes and makeup.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Aaron watched in horror as the bank account slowly drained.
There was still some part of him that expected her
to pay for the treatment. For a while, there was
still enough in the account eight thousand dollars to afford it.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
It's getting smaller and smaller. I'm not seeing the big
expenditure for the treatment. And then one day we've passed
below the line of what the treatment costs. That was
the whole reason we were supposed to borrow this money
in the first place. And she's spending two hundred bucks
a week on my little pony phone game micro transactions.
(32:02):
It gets below half of what she supposedly needed for
this treatment. And then it finally gets below a thousand dollars,
and that was the day I kind of snapped.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Aaron had woken up before Sabrina to walk the dogs.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I went in the kitchen. I grabbed a bunch of
black garriage bags from under the sink. She was still
in bed.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
He woke her up, handed her the trash bags, and
told her to start packing her things.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
At first, she tried to deny that she had spent
the money, and that's when I revealed that no, I
had actually been watching her bank account. And that's when
the whopper to end all whoppers comes out of her mouth.
She tells me that she's been working the day shift
at a strip club while I've been at work at Nintendo.
(32:55):
She doesn't have a receipt for it, but she did
get the treatment, and that's what she spent her stripper
money on.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Aarin wasn't buying it.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Honestly, I think this was the last time I ever
believed a word she said. She managed to get me
to not throw her out with crocodile tears, claiming she
would get me receipts.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Aaron knew he should walk away from the relationship, but
the reality was a lot more complicated.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
An emotional abusive relationship is like a cult of two people.
The cult leader no longer had control over me, but
I also didn't have the emotional and financial strength to leave.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
At this point, Sabrina suggested opening their relationship and seeing
other people. Aaron agreed. In the months that followed, Sabrina
was still adamant that she had paid for the interfere
on treatment.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I could never get documented proof of it. No receipts,
no information from the doctor, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Aarin was trying to find a way to leave the relationship,
but he was worried about what would happen to Sabrina
when he left. She had been dependent on him for
six years now.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I still believed that she had MS, but that she
just wasn't nearly as bad as what she led on
because I had seen enough visual indicators to convince me
that she was at least impaired. Somehow, it felt like
she was just taking advantage of my family's history with
(34:30):
MS to try and squeeze as much money out of
my family as possible.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Since Erin and Sabrina had opened their relationship, he started
seeing someone named Kia. He loved spending time with her.
She was like a breath of fresh air. One night,
while Aaron was out on a date with Kia, he
got an alarming text from Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Sabrina had told me that she was in the bathroom,
had taken a whole bottle of pills.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sabrina had made a suicide d tempt. Aaron began to panic.
He knew Sabrina often lied in exaggerated things, but if
there was any chance at all that this was true,
he had to help her.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So Keia and I rushed home. We parked outside.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Well, Aaron and Kia were still in the car. The
front door of the house opened.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
And Sabrina walks out with two of her friends to
go out to dinner.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
She didn't see him in the car. She walked right
past him. For Aaron, that moment changed everything.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
This was purely a power play to try and keep
my attention.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Aarin was starting to realize that his girlfriend, Sabrina was
lying about the severity of her MS symptoms to get
financial support from him and his friends. Aaron hadn't found
a way to leave the relationship. He was still worried
about her physical and mental health. One night, Sabrina texted
him that she had attempted suicide and locked herself in
(36:23):
the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So Keian I rushed home, parked outside, and while we're
sitting out there, Sabrina walks out with two of her
friends to go out to dinner.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Erin was scared that Sabrina's life was at risk and
she needed immediate medical attention, but here she was dressed
up to go out, laughing with her friends.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
This was purely a power play to try and keep
my attention. After Sabrina came home, I told her that
I saw her leaving, and she tried to tell me
that they were taking her to the hospital. I told
her I knew that was bullshit.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
For the last five years of their relationship, Sabrina had
been convincing Aaron that she was on the brink of
collapse mentally and physically, and that he was the only
person who could keep her safe. But now the extent
of her deception was becoming clear to Aaron. This wasn't
just exaggeration and bad spending habits. This was emotional and
(37:24):
financial abuse.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
The following weekend, I invited one of my good friends
over to kind of steal my resolve, and I sat
Sabrina down on the couch in the living room and
I told her we are not in a relationship anymore.
I'm not paying for everything anymore. I'm done.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
The next weekend, while Sabrina was out of the house,
Aaron's friends helped him move out.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I read at a due apartment across town, where she
didn't know where I lived. I think she knew it
was coming. She knew she was busted for the fake
suicide attempt, and she had just resigned herself to the
fact that the spigot that was Aarons turned off.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Sabrina and Aaron still had a lot of mutual friends.
After the breakup, Aaron distanced himself from their social group.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
She told a lot of people that I was physically abusive,
financially abusive, that I was the one pissing away all
of our money.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Aaron was isolated from his community and left to deal
with the impact of years of financial and emotional abuse.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I was left with significant psychological trauma that I, unfortunately
didn't take the time to properly process.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
A few years past, Aaron was trying to rebuild a
base of stability in his life and pay off the
debt he mounted while taking care of Sabrina. One day,
Aaron was on Facebook when he saw that one of
his old friends had posted a GoFundMe for Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I clicked on the link and gave it a read.
She was in Japan. Someone had cleaned out her accounts
while she was in Japan, and she was stuck there
with no return ticket and no money. I posted her
apply to the GoFundMe, saying that if you're going to
start raising money for Sabrina, how about you start raising
(39:31):
money to pay all the people back that she took
money from and never paid back.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
The organizer of the GoFundMe criticized him for calling Sabrina's
character into question. His concern was shut down in the comments,
but other people had started catching on to Sabrina's lies.
The friends she was hanging out with in Japan. They
collected evidence then posted their side of the story to Facebook.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Sabrina posted that she had spent the day at the
Bullet train station trying to figure out what the best
time to jump in front of the train was. In reality,
she had spent that day at Disneyland, Tokyo, spending hundreds
or one thousands of dollars and at the same time
pleading poverty on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Finally, Sabrina was exposed. The truth was out there, and
there was no way for her to talk her way
out of it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Over the next week, I probably fielded a dozen or
more apologies. Sabrina's scam worked great until people actually started
talking to each other, and then it all fell apart.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Other people began to come forward, sharing their own stories
of Sabrina borrowing money and never paying them back.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It felt gratifying to know that I wasn't the only one,
and at the same time I was racked with guilt
that if I had figured some of this stuff out sooner,
maybe a lot of these other people wouldn't have lost
all this money.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
One day, something unexpected happened.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I'm at work at Nintendo, just plugging away, and I
get an email notification on my smartphone. I looked down
and it's from the FBI ari information about Sabrina Taylor.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
The FBI was investigating Sabrina for fraud.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
I gave the agent a call and we spent about
an hour going through all of the different parts of
my time with Sabrina, her MS treatments and diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
The FBI kept Aaron up to date on Sabrina's case.
She was charged with four counts of wire fraud. She
appeared in court for the first time in November of
twenty twenty one. After that, Aaron was able to see
the case the FBI had built against Sabrina.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
It wasn't until I saw some of the evidence that
I was one hundred percent certain that she had never
had MS. They had forged documents using doctor's letter heads.
They had statements from multiple doctors that they'd tested her
multiple times that she never had MS. One hundred percent
(42:19):
of it was a lie.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Erin had been paying for drugs like Gaba pentten under
the impression that they were critical in managing Sabrina's MS symptoms,
but gaba penton can be used to treat a variety
of more mild conditions. After learning the truth about Sabrina's health,
Erin did some research and learned that she was taking
around three times over the maximum recommended dose of gaba penttin.
(42:45):
We don't know what she was using it for, but
the drug is often used off label for anxiety, and
if misused, it can be addictive. Sabrina Taylor defrauded numerous
victims out of over six hundred thousand dollars. She stole
this money not from strangers, but from people who trusted her,
who were concerned about her diagnosis, and who were willing
(43:08):
to make compromises in their own lives to help her
afford treatment and care. On July one, twenty twenty two,
she fled guilty to one count of wire fraud for
a scheme to defraud friends and acquaintances. Her health wasn't
the only thing she fabricated. Sabrina's entire identity was a lie.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
She never worked for the Gates Foundation, she never graduated
from U dub and she'd never even gotten close to
medical school and has mostly lived her life off the
generosity of others.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
At this point, there was one question all of her
victims wanted an answer.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
To where was the money going.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
It was the kind of thing that was impossible to
understand unless you watched it up close. Like Aaron had
watching Brina's bank account drain transaction by transaction, he knew
where the money went.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
The truth is the money was just going to traveling
and shopping and not having to work. She was trying
to live the lifestyle she thought she deserved and didn't
care how many people she had to leach off of
to make that lifestyle happen.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
When Sabrina pled guilty, the US Attorney's Office for the
Western District of Washington released a statement about her crimes.
We've had a voice actor read sections of it.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Taylor engaged in a sustained and calculated course of conduct
that preyed upon her victim's best emotions. Taylor used a
substantial portion of the defrauded funds to pay for luxuries,
such as almost sixty thousand dollars from multiple trips to
Japan and Korea, nearly thirty eight thousand dollars for online
purchases from Amazon, and Etsy more than twenty nine thousand
(45:02):
for clothing and nearly sixteen thousand dollars for makeup. Taylor
met some of the people she defrauded online, using shared
interests such as Japanese anime, comic books, or video games
to establish a relationship.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Sabrina's sentencing hearing was six months later, in January of
twenty twenty three. It was the first time Aaron had
seen her in over five years. He delivered a statement
at the hearing.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I laid out a lot of the trauma that had
come with everything that my dad had basically worked an
extra year or two passed when he thought he was
going to retire to try and cover all of my debts. Essentially,
I told the judge that one of her favorite tactics
(45:52):
was to threaten to commit suicide to get people to
do what she wanted when she wanted it done. And
I think because of what I said, the judge rescinded
her bail and sent her into confinement immediately because he
did not want her to try to repeat that pattern.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Sabrina was sentenced to twenty seven months in prison. Assistant
United States Attorney Joe Silvio released a sentencing memo. We've
had a voice actor read part of it.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
Taylor carried out an extensive Frond scheme using deceit and
deception that preyed upon humankind's better angels. Several of Taylor's
victims suffered substantial financial hardship, some likely will never be
made whole financially. Equally as important, Taylor exploited and betrayed
the trust of each of her victims, and many of
(46:46):
Taylor's victims will continue to pay an emotional toll for
many years to come.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I was definitely a lot less anxious during the time
that I knew she was in prison. She has been
returned to this Seattle area. I know she's still around here.
Luckily I haven't run into her, but that's definitely something
that's on the back of my mind.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Even though Sabrina isn't in Aaron's life anymore, her financial
abuse will affect him for a long time. It's hard
to know the exact number that Aaron spent on Sabrina,
but he estimates it was at least one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. His debt severely impacted his credit and
he'll be paying it off for years to come.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
The total number I ended up owing my mom was
just short of one hundred thousand dollars. I've been paying
back what I could in the years since, and there
is no way I'll be able to pay my mom
back before she dies. I'm one of the lucky ones.
I had someone that I could borrow that kind of
money off of to get everything straightened out. I very
(47:52):
easily could have had to declare bankruptcy over this.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Sabrina was ordered to pay some of her victim's restitution,
but Aaron's name was not included in the list because
of statute of limitations. To Aaron, this isn't a story
about how we shouldn't trust others.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
She is the outlier. For every Sabrina that's out there,
there are ten thousand people who actually need the help.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
To Aaron, this is a story about how we should
trust ourselves.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
If you feel like you're being taken advantage of, or
if you feel like you're doing everything for this other
person and struggling to keep your head above water, start
asking for proof. That was really what unraveled Sabrina's entire
con was somebody asked for the receipts.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
The experience has given Aaron a new perspective on financial
and emotional abuse.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
This kind of thing happens to a lot more people
than anyone realizes, and it's not something you should hold
against anybody when it happens to them. The same kind
of thing can happen to anybody under the right circumstances.
I am a lot slower to trust people than I
(49:12):
used to be, but it hasn't kept me from trusting
people at all.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
We end every weekly episode with the same question, why
do you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
These things do happen to men, and you're not less
of a man for this having happened to you. And
I really think that we need to be just as
honest as the women that are coming forward with stories
like these. If this story helps one person get out
(49:50):
or helps their friend get out of a toxic, abusive relationship,
then this was all worth it.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
How in the world could someone stoop that low and
go to that extreme? Were you too cowardly?
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Just tell me the truth.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Please note that we are not
a mental health organization. If you are in crisis or
currently experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local
(50:52):
help or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations
that offer immediate support. In our show, notes included a
list of US based resources. You can follow us on
Instagram at Betrayal pod or find me at It's Andrea Gunning.
To access our newsletter and additional content, and to connect
(51:12):
with the Betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal dot
substack dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five star reviews go a long way. Big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
(51:33):
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is
Monique Lebord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer
(51:54):
is Leah Jablow. Production management by Kristin Melcurie, Booking support
by Curry Richmond, Voice acting by Todd Gans and Carrie Hartman.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Treessica Crincheck. Audio
editing by Tanner Robbins, with additional editing and mixing by
Matt Delvecchio. Portrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library
(52:17):
provided by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts
Host
Andrea Gunning
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