Is Catfish Up To The Challenge Of Investigating An Actual Criminal?

The Client

Lucille, an aspiring music industry professional in Philadelphia.

The Beloved Target

Kidd Cole, a hip-hop producer based in D.C.

The Clues

This is kind of a departure for Catfish in that the grifter has never even pretended to strike up any kind of love connection: Kidd Cole is a music producer who struck up an online friendship with Lucille, a fan. After they'd been talking for a while, Lucille got a call from Miguel, Kidd's manager, inviting her to Kidd's birthday party and then asking her to help him do some legwork for an event he was putting together for Kidd in D.C., on the promise of $1000 for her time and that if things went well, there could be a job for her at G.O.O.D. Music, Kanye West's label, to which Kidd had recently been signed. It ended up turning into two weeks of (unpaid) work for her as she arranged for cars and security and whatever the hell else.

Now that the background is established, here are the actual clues: since Lucille was the only point of contact for all the services Kidd said he wanted, more than $23,000 worth of invoices started coming to her and were apparently never paid; Kidd and Miguel returned service contracts without filling in any contact info; after Lucille started getting the invoices, she contacted Miguel, who never answered; even after all this business, Kidd went back to Lucille trying to get her credit card info so he could book a security detail for an alleged CNN press conference.

The Excuses

Kidd and Miguel made Lucille front at least some of the money to book this stuff because "the label" had them on "financial lockdown." And that's kind of it.

The Investigation

It starts out bad: though Max and Nev had been pretty impressed that Kidd Cole has an artist page on MTV.com (or rather, had one), when they call Alison Thiel, the network's Music Supervisor, she informs them that anyone can create one of those. I have to assume this functionality has changed since this episode was shot and if it hasn't it should. They also ask her if she can reach out to G.O.O.D. Music and see if Kidd has anything to do with them, to which the answer will turn out to be no. There's music online that's linked to Kidd's name, but scratching the surface shows that his credits are fake. Searching the number Lucille had for Miguel reveals that it's registered to Jerez Coleman, Kidd Cole's real name.

So then they just Google "jerez coleman" and one of the first-page results is a Facebook page warning that Kidd Cole is a scam artist, which means that for all her worries and misgivings about him, Lucille never bothered to do this pretty obvious thing. I mean, not searching Spokeo -- fine. That costs a couple of bucks. BUT GOOGLE IS FREE. Anyway, someone named Loretta posted on this page's Wall saying that she's an independent limousine driver in D.C. and just got scammed by Kidd Cole the previous week, so Max and Nev contact Loretta to try to get her story -- noting that, if nothing else, it suggests that Kidd is still running the same game he did on/through Lucille; she writes back right away wanting to meet, which is good because she's actually had an in-person interaction with the target.

The Presentation Of Findings

Lucille doesn't seem sufficiently embarrassed not to have found the Kidd Cole Scam Facebook page herself, if you ask me, but she's ready to take her quiet resignation to D.C.

The Further Investigation

Loretta picks up Nev, Max, and Lucille and take her on a driving tour of D.C., telling the story of her time with Kidd Cole, who "scammed [her] out of almost eight grand." She drove him out to a restaurant to eat and learned he had no money to pay the bill; the next day she heard that Kidd had his wallet stolen with $800 in it. "He told me a similar story about how somebody robbed him," Lucille sighs, saying that was his reason for hiring so much security. Hey, the same thing happened with Loretta, who arranged for security so that Kidd could go shopping at...H & M. AT H & M. Loretta then says she dropped Kidd off at what was supposedly his grandma's house; when she got herself an invite inside, the old lady told her, "They've been staying with me for two months. I think they're homeless." Loretta's paralegal friend searched him and found his arrest record on felony charges; apparently, he's due in court the next Monday, "so he's going to get caught."

And here's where I have to call bullshit on Lucille's earlier claim that she talked to a couple of her cop friends who said that nothing Kidd did to Lucille is...a crime? Which I'm pretty sure fraud totaling $23,000 probably is, in addition to which if all of these people were dealing with Lucille, she would possibly be charged with? Wouldn't Loretta have probably called the cops? Even if she didn't, at this point shouldn't Max and Nev rather than involve themselves? But, of course, involve themselves they do: they call Kidd saying that Lucille wants to meet the dude she's been friends with for a year, and for some reason, he agrees. The way it's edited, with Nev just saying he has "a show on MTV" and that he's been hearing a lot about "the famous Kidd Cole," makes it seem like Kidd wants to meet up because he thinks Catfish is a music show that's going to break him or something, but I have to think that even if he doesn't watch the show, given his line of "work" as a grifter, he must know what it is? I mean, now we know that none of this would even be happening if the show's real producers hadn't already arranged everything, but I still don't know how they would have gotten Kidd to go along with anything knowing what he did.

The Confrontation

Bizarrely, the version of the episode on MTV's site cuts out this whole segment? But here's what happens.

https://twitter.com/KaraRBrown/statuses/471842601763880960

The avengers find Kidd waiting at some waterfront, and after a side hug, Lucille sets him up by asking what he's working on. He casually tells a couple of lies about Wale and RZA.

Quit fishing for compliments, Max. Anyway: Kidd either hasn't ever seen Catfish, or claims not to have, which is all the cue Lucille needs to ask him, "What's the deal with you?" He's all like, huh? Nev and Max get Lucille to recap her tale of woe, by which Kidd seems unmoved. Max tells him they unraveled the fraud of his alleged beats online, and Kidd sniffs that all his beats are "copywritten," that he's surrounded by powerful people, and that "everything [he does] is correct." When Lucille starts detailing all the price points of the shit he never paid for, Kidd can't see a way to make a graceful exit, so he gets his phone out and verrrrrrrry awkwardly starts pretending to read texts while ignoring direct questions.

And then Nev says, "I like that case," and reaches for it, and...

So assuming the cops are actually conducting a real investigation of this guy, they might have wanted a look at that phone? But sure, I guess that little move was worth it to make Nev look like a stud.

https://twitter.com/KaraRBrown/statuses/471844147352305664

Kidd calmly tells Nev he's going to need his phone back, and Nev's like, your phone's gone, answer some questions, and Kidd's like, how about no? And then the real producer has to step in and promise Kidd they'll get him a new phone and that they're sorry. While Nev and Max are in another time-out with their producer, Lucille tries to get Kidd to own up to some of his shit to her alone, and he's all, "I'm a very private person," just like all fame-begging, CNN press conference-having hip-hop producers are. Lucille presses him about all the money people spent on his empty promises, to which Kidd has the somewhat legitimate response that he's too irritated about the loss of his phone to continue with this: "It's a wrap for today." But then Nev apologizes, and Kidd volunteers that he's going to be in the studio recording the next day, so "to shut you up," he invites everyone to come see how very real his music career actually is. DONE AND DONE.

The Post-Confrontation Confrontation

I'm going to shorthand this because it's so pitiful. Max, Nev, and Lucille show up at a residential house with a recording studio in the basement, manned by "sound engineer" Hadi, who says he lives there with his parents. He says he's worked on all the CDs that are up on the wall, and then Kidd offers to play some of what they've been working on, whereupon Max Soundhounds it and shows Nev that it's actually "a famous group." And then Nev suggests that he go into the booth so they can record him right now...and it turns out that this "sound engineer" doesn't actually know how anything works, because he's not a sound engineer and it's not his place and all of this is in service of the scam and Hadi borrowed the place from a friend of his to help Kidd out for reasons unknown. Max takes a lot of pleasure in telling Kidd that Hadi sold him out.

Basically, Kidd and his long, filthy nails did all of this because he really is great at music but he didn't think he'd be taken seriously unless he presented himself as a big shot. He deflects blame by whining that the show is being disrespectful to him. After he pulls off his microphone, Max tries to tell him that if he can't pay people back for his scams, he should at least apologize. So then he tells a tale about being in a homeless shelter when he was sixteen and being told by someone there that he was too poor to make it, which I...am not sure I believe actually happened? And then Lucille tells him that he's going about his career the wrong way, and Max tells him "You're too smart to be doing what you're doing" which seems to be the fluff line of Season 3 (he told Carmen the same thing), and Kidd promises to work on himself. I don't know about you, but that promise is definitely worth more to me than $23,000!

Hugs?

No hugs.

The Aftermath

Two months later: as a result of this whole escapade, Lucille's switched her major to Criminal Justice. I hope she's unlearned everything she saw Max and Nev do. She's less trusting than she used to be. Kidd isn't talking to the show anymore, but according to Lucille, the latest is that he claims to have co-produced "Drunk In Love." He also still hasn't paid anyone for anything.

The Life Lessons Learned

Maybe do a simple Google search on someone before you spend two weeks of your life PAing for him? Don't mess around on your phone when Nev is present. And when someone is using you to commit five figures' worth of fraud, CALL THE POLICE.