Acts of Kindness
Man Receives Email From Scammer, Responds To “Teach Him A Lesson” But Discovers Hidden Truth
"I just figured here's another one of those scams, and so I wanted to teach them a lesson because you don't just mess with people and get away with it."
Jonathan Maes
05.21.18

We’ve probably all dealt with spam, scams or messages from otherwise untrustworthy sources before, but one man from Utah decided to approach things a little bit differently when he received a plea for help from a total stranger.

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Ben Taylor was one of the recipients of what we could describe as a spam message, but it turns out that the sender of that message had pure intentions.

The man from Utah, who works as a marketing manager, received the following message from Joel Willie via Facebook:

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“My name is Joel from Liberia, West Africa. I need some assistance from you. Business or financial assistance dat (sic) will help empower me.”

Joel used his extremely outdated feature phone, which remarkably had a dedicated option to browse Facebook, to get in touch with complete strangers on the internet. The man was clearly struggling to make ends meet as he has to care for his wife and seven children in a very poor country.

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However, Ben immediately and rightfully thought that this was just another spam message – after all, millions of these are sent every single day. If there’s one thing you can do to combat spammers, it’s wasting their time.

Ben decided to play along and asked Joel to fulfill a couple of tasks. He had no intention of helping the man, he just hoped that the spammer would learn a lesson.

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“I’ve gotten these types of messages before,” Ben told CBS. “So when I got it, I just figured here’s another one of those scams, and so I wanted to teach them a lesson because you don’t just mess with people and get away with it.”

The marketing manager from Utah then said he was a professional photographer, and asked Joel to take pictures in his area.

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However, Ben didn’t expect that Joel would actually send him the pictures.

“I’m starting to see that he’s a real guy, who’s living in a country with real poverty,” Ben said. “But then I thought, well, what if I made just a collection of all these photos and I put them together in little booklets and I sold it online to whoever was interested in the story or whoever was just interested in helping a guy out.”

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Instead of just sending Joel money, Ben decided that they would work together to try and alleviate the man’s poor financial situation. With Joel’s pictures and Ben’s marketing skills, the two came up with a photography book which was made available for sale online.

The book was named “By D Grace of God”, something that Joel often says. It sold over 5,000 copies, which was way more than either of them expected. Ben gathered enough money from the book sales to meet Joel and help him out.

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Ben then took a plane to Liberia, West Africa, which was more than 6500 miles away from home to meet Joel in person for the first time.

The profits of the book already accounted for some urgent and basic needs such as food and a new roof for Joel’s family, but the majority of the book profits won’t go to Joel directly. Instead, the two have agreed on redistributing the profits to benefit the local community.

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Poverty is a serious issue in Liberia, and seeing all these people in poor conditions was heartbreaking for Ben to witness. The two unlikeliest of friends have now been able to provide a number of schools with supplies and necessities for the children in the area, and they’re planning on supporting local entrepreneurs and improve the financial situation of the neighborhood altogether.

“Joel had to do a lot of work to make it happen,” Ben laughed.

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“I’ve changed,” he added. “I set out to embarrass a guy. I ended up helping a guy. I would much rather continue to help people. You feel good when you help others.”

Joel is incredibly happy that he encountered Ben on Facebook and says it changed him as a person.

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“I used to receive,” the Liberian man told. “I’m the one who’s giving now, and it’s better to give than to always receive. I hoped that one day I could come from nobody to somebody, I could come from zero to be a hero.”

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What an inspiring story!

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