The riskiest part of their exchange wasn't the photo she sent him that revealed a bit of her bra. It was that it happened at all. In a lengthy piece for Wired, Vince Beiser shares the story of Jared Johns, a Army vet living in South Carolina who seemed to be turning his life around after things essentially fell apart following a career-ending injury in Afghanistan. But then he traded a few lines with "Caroline Harris" on a dating site. She sent him that photo and said she was about to turn 18. He replied "cool," and asked when. She said her birthday was a few weeks later—Sept. 15, 2018—and asked his age. "Oh ok are you still in high school? And I'm 24." That was the end of that—until he got a phone call from a man who said he was a police detective. The "detective" said Caroline's parents had accused Johns of sexually propositioning a minor and wanted him arrested.
He gave Johns the Harris' number so he could try to work things out; Johns called and spoke with "James Harris." He threatened jail time unless Johns paid $1,189 to cover the cost of his daughter's cell contract, which the Harrises said had been canceled to punish their daughter. Johns Googled the detective's number, and it matched that of a police department. He was distraught and told Lisa, a woman he was seeing, about it. She tried to reassure him he hadn't crossed any line. But he kept texting the Harrises and getting threatened with police involvement. Less than 48 hours after that initial phone call, Johns killed himself—and Lisa told his family what had transpired. What they discovered: there was no Caroline. It was all a scam, and one that was allegedly orchestrated by two inmates at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina. (Read Beiser's full piece to learn how the alleged perpetrators were discovered.)
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