This is the short version of my story. I first wrote Darcy late in 2007 and we struck up a pen pal correspondence friendship. What was immediately disturbing about Darcy was that he claimed he was looking for ‘love’ via the Mail. He claimed he was getting out soon and needed to meet someone to help him rebuild his life.
The official prison record for Darcy Hurley (see links) shows his parole date as February 2010. However, Darcy claimed he was getting out on August 1, 2008 because he won an appeal. When he first made this claim I was suspicious because the public record on the web made no mention of this. But he reiterated this story many times in our correspondence.
As it drew closer to summer Darcy began to appear desperate. He said he was counting down the days to August 1st. He claimed he had no one on the outside and had nowhere to go when he gets out in August. He began to pressure me to help him out.
I was reluctant at first, but I have a home based business that I have trouble finding enough time for. Without going into too many details, I figured I could use him in the business for at least a while and that would (a) bring in some income for the business and (b) give him some usable skills. So I agreed to try it out for 30 days.
This then led to talk of money. He claimed he needed money to travel from Arizona to Seattle. I first resisted and said we could work something out on the day he gets out. But he claimed the prison system requires the money to be in his account before the day he gets out and they will need to buy the airfare for him.
Darcy Hurley also pressured me to let him call me. According to him, this required me setting up an account in the prison call system (Correctional Billing) and depositing $50 in it ($50 was their minimum deposit). So after a little more back and forth on the airfare, I sent him $400 for airfare late in May; a move I have now come to regret.
Darcy wrote regularly. He typically wrote about every two weeks. It was because of this regularity I realized he was a scam by the end of June. His last written correspondence had been June 3, 2008 and his last attempt to call me was June 13, 2008. After that point, I did not hear from Darcy again. I can make an educated guess that sometime around June 13th was when the $400 money order I sent him cleared his account and at that point, he had gotten what he wanted from me.
As I expected, August 1st came and went with not a word from Darcy Hurley. And as far as I can tell he is still in the Arizona prison system where he should be. This blog will help expose him to anyone who might be planning to assist or befriend Darcy.
