Welcome to hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vednantam.
I did a story this past weekend for the public radio show this american life.
The story was in an episode titled the heart wants what it wants.
We're going to take the whole podcast today to share this unusual story with you.
It's a little longer than usual and best heard in a single sitting, so we're going to give it to you without any interruptions.
The story is about a con that unfolded very slowly over two decades.
The thing that fascinated me about this story is that when the con was finally exposed, many of the victims were heartbroken.
They wanted it to go on.
They wanted to keep believing.
So here's how the con worked.
Guys around the country signed up for a pen pal service.
It would put them in touch with women they could befriend and correspond with.
And then they'd start to receive letters.
They come from Hillsdale, Illinois, and some of them are white, pink, green.
Jesse is a sweet, soft spoken man with thick plastic aviator glasses.
He started receiving the letters in 1985 when he was in his thirties.
Back then, he was overweight.
He'd never had a serious girlfriend, always lived with his parents.
After his mother died, he spent most of his time taking care of his sick dad and working at his family's restaurant.