Man who answered email from suspected scammer does good — for a second time
From a desperate place across the Atlantic, a suspicious message was sent in 2018.
"My name is Joel from Liberia, West Africa," the message read. "I need some assistance from you. Business or financial assistance that will help empower me."
Six thousand miles away, a stranger received the message and answered. Ben Taylor previously told CBS News that at first, he believed the message was from a scammer.
"I just wanted to go down this rabbit hole and see what were the tricks that they used to get people," he said at the time. "I took him for a scammer, but he showed me that there was a different side to him."
After receiving the message, Taylor befriended the stranger and worked to help him help himself. Taylor and Joel made a little booklet about his life, which was then sold online. Joel made hundreds of dollars, and Taylor even traveled to visit him and see the results of their partnership.
Once their story was shared by CBS News in 2018, many tried to take advantage of Taylor. His inbox and spam folder blew up with supposedly desperate pleas for money. One message was from a woman in Cameroon, who said she needed money for reconstructive plastic surgery. The email that Taylor received had been circulating on the internet for years, and was even posted on a scam-reporting website.
Something about it intrigued Taylor, though.
"I've read into her story, and it felt like something I couldn't ignore," he said. "I did a lot of work to kind of get to the bottom of it."
As it turned out, the story was true. The woman, Chikaordery, had had a botched surgery as a child that left her with intermittent but excruciating stomach pain.
So, just like he had in 2018, Taylor flew to see the woman who had been written off by so many as a scammer. He showed her a new book that he wrote, whose sales would pay for her operation, titled "It Shall Come to Pass," which included Chikaordery's drawings and her life story.
Chikaordery had the operation, and Ben Taylor is now home from his second trip, halfway around the world, to help a stranger.
"It's just a lot of fun to see people be the hero of their own story," he said.
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