Over the years in Costa Rica, I have met my share of con artists, bull throwers, and downright liars, both expat and local. I have heard many cover stories–and I’m not referring to magazines. My second year here, a US-based expat I knew died. He lived alone, and it was later discovered that he had two sets of identification–his original name and the name he went by when I knew him.
It was alleged he was in the witness protection program. I never heard an official explanation, but all who knew him were stunned that we all knew him by an alias– the ultimate cover story. A cover story is defined as a fictitious account invented to conceal a person’s identity or reasons for doing something. When I ran a bar in Quepos, I had a client who I’ll call Rico (and here it occurs to me that I am using a fictional name in place of the fictional name he used).
He was a Tico who spoke excellent English. He would latch onto tourists drinking alone or in pairs and strike up a conversation. He was a practitioner of what military people call stolen valor. His favorite claim was that he was once an Army ranger. But I also heard him tell people that he had been a Green Beret, or Special Forces. One evening he was chatting with an actual Marine Corps vet. Rico claimed he was also an ex-marine. They left together to hit some other bars.
The ex-marine was back in my bar about an hour later. He said Rico was lucky he didn’t get his ass kicked–that it took about 2 minutes of conversation to figure out he had never served in the marines. I eventually banned Rico from the bar and he soon disappeared from town. Flash forward about ten years. I was in the Club Colonial Casino in San Jose with a couple friends and ran into Rico. Except now he was going by a different name.
He introduced himself as Raymond, then our eyes met and I could tell he was trying to remember from where he knew me. He was hanging around the bar, looking for a hustle. I asked him why he wasn’t going by Rico and he laughed uncomfortably and went to the other side of the bar. Another weird, easily disproven cover story was from a guy I met in another bar. I was just another drinker this time. The guy had been in town a month or so, and claimed he was a Professor of Romance Languages at a major southern university.
Then I heard him try to order from the menu in Spanish, and it sounded like his first week speaking the language. Busted! Many years ago, I knew a woman who claimed to be the daughter of a famous actor. She was well off financially–the only problem was that the internet and google search existed, and exhaustive online searches all showed the same thing–that while this actor had several children, none bore her name.
When a search of her name was done, the only entries that came up were articles about her, where she claimed to be the daughter of the famous actor. I have not seen her in years, but yesterday, I googled the actor and his children, and she was still nowhere to be found.
Then there was the young, athletic surfer who showed up in town under an assumed name and let it be known that he had played college football at a major US university.
If only he had known that at that time, the most fanatical fan ever of that same university was living in the same town. Everyone got suspicious when several planned meetings between the two fell through, always canceled by the surfer. Everyone’s suspicions were confirmed when Interpol showed up and arrested him on various serious charges back in the states.
Happily, the vast majority of us live transparent lives here. But there are always impostors among us, so keep your radar up and your bullshit detector on when meeting anyone new
