Ten minutes into Sweet Bobby, from the “slow news” organisation Tortoise Media, there is a massive spoiler that should, in theory, knock the wind out of the whole series. This new six-part podcast tells of a scam but also of a love affair. It is, as the presenter and investigative reporter Alexi Mostrous describes it, “a screwed-up, crazy kind of love story filled with death, lies and witness protection programmes”. At the centre is Kirat, a 30-year-old woman who meets a cardiologist named Bobby online and is manipulated and coerced by him for more than 10 years, leading to her losing her friends and her career. But we soon learn that this man isn’t who he says he is. While his identity is that of a real person, he is played by an imposter. He is, in fact, a catfish — a person using a false online identity.
Sweet Bobby isn’t your regular true crime podcast. For starters, there’s no corpse, which is both a rarity and a relief. More surprising is the question of whether a crime has been committed; British law is somewhat woolly when it comes to catfishing. But the whodunnit aspect remains, even though Mostrous’s primary concern is not so much “who” but “how” and “why”.
The first two episodes show us how Kirat was reeled in and, for those of us who can recall a pre-internet era when relationships were formed in person, it is grimly fascinating. Bobby’s deception is complex, patient and bold. Crucial to the scam is that Kirat is part of Britain’s Sikh community, and thus has a strong network of friends, cousins, aunts and uncles. On making contact via Facebook, Bobby immediately references members of Kirat’s family, which makes it easy to earn her trust. Later, he chats to her parents online and shares pictures of a baby that appears to be wearing clothes that Kirat bought as a present. Such is his dedication to the scam, it takes him four years to declare his feelings for her.
This is an extraordinary story that is made even more powerful by Mostrous’s empathetic and wide-ranging reporting. As well as talking to Kirat and sifting through several thousand voice-notes and messages exchanged between her and Bobby, he also consults psychologists and criminologists. The series not only tells Kirat’s story, but a wider tale about the nature of online scams and the psychology of coercive control.
Credit, too, to Tortoise, which is shaping up as one of the more exciting UK podcast producers, with a small but high-quality portfolio including My Mother’s Murder, about the assassination of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and Hidden Homicides, about the true toll of domestic abuse against women. It is tough for any British media network to go up against the BBC’s vast output. But, as Sweet Bobby demonstrates, a carefully curated, less-is-more approach can reap rewards.
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November 08, 2021 at 12:00PM
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Catfishing and coercion — Sweet Bobby podcast is grimly fascinating - Financial Times
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