Then he used reverse psychology, asking her if she was being real with him. “I don’t want someone who’s gonna play around me,” he said, insisting that he lived in Florida with his daughter while secretly in the process of divorcing his wife, Brandi.
Last, he called her. “This is WWE Cody, aka Cody Rhodes,” Chibuike said, deepening his voice to imitate the wrestler’s. They talked for almost two hours. Initially, Theresa was afraid of heartbreak. Her husband had left her a year earlier, and she was still processing the trauma. But Chibuike convinced her quickly. “How long have you been watching my matches?” he asked. “A couple of years,” she replied. She was obsessed with Cody Rhodes’ “shiny” hair. “I would love to meet you,” he said, “but being a WWE wrestler, we have to go through some processes to meet each other.” He told her about filling out a “vacation form.” If she paid some money, they could meet up in person.
Several hours after their phone conversation, Theresa sent him three gift cards worth 100 euros each. It was Chibuike’s first big cash-out. To celebrate it, he treated himself to a big meal, bought a better phone (35,000 naira), and gold earrings (50,000 naira). The rest he “flexed” on drinks for his friends. He had earned more from her in a single day than he had in 18 months at the water factory.
Despite sending the first 300 euros and not meeting Cody Rhodes in person, Theresa continued chatting with him anyway. Her interest quickly deepened into an obsession, and soon, they were talking constantly—every day, almost every hour. Theresa was a mother of one in her late fifties, working in a mail-sorting facility in Dublin, or so Chibuike thought. She sometimes talked to him on the phone even while at work. They spoke so much that Chibuike used to run out of data and had to hang up, buy more, and call her back. They also sang songs together.
“She had an Alexa. When she was bored, she’d say: ‘Alexa, play “All of Me,”’ and we’d sing together,” Chibuike said.
After her husband’s departure, she felt nobody understood her. “Theresa was lonely,” Chibuike said. “She would always tell me, ‘No one has time for me,’ ‘I haven’t smiled in a long time,’ ‘I want someone who’s going to be with me until my last breath.’”
At first, Chibuike sent her messages by copying and pasting formats. These prewritten scripts were widely available online—on Scribd, TikTok, Pinterest, Telegram, Facebook—but most scammers, including Chibuike, got them from the street. After a few months, he realized it was more effective to use his own words rather than rely on scripted love messages, and so he used them only for inspiration. One such format, saved on his phone during that time, read:
I know there’s an ocean between us and I wish that it weren’t true for every day when I arise I yearn to be with you. Though a lot of distance lies between us, you’ll always be in my mind and my heart, And every night beneath the stars, I pray for the day we’ll never be apart. Every day I will be thinking about you.