transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Oh, hey.

Speaker 2:
[00:02] Sorry, love to chat, but I'm busy shopping all the rollbacks that were at Walmart. Grab a what? Cancel that. I got to grab these big savings on the Walmart app, online and in store like right now. See who? Nope, unavailable. The only thing I want to see are the prices just lowered on Tech Home and all my must haves. Wait, you want to shop Walmart with me? Alrighty, I think I can fit you in. Refreshing Wild Cherry Cola meets Smooth Cream.

Speaker 3:
[00:38] The treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream, treat yourself. How do you both know each other?

Speaker 1:
[00:49] We live next door to each other. I've lived on the street for over 20 years and Harley is now my neighbor.

Speaker 4:
[00:56] Yeah, we moved in in 2018 right next door, and we met shortly thereafter.

Speaker 3:
[01:05] Harley Rustad and his neighbor Cathy live in Toronto. Cathy, you've been there for 20 years. What do you like about the neighborhood? Describe the neighborhood.

Speaker 1:
[01:15] It's cool. We're close to the university. There's really cool restaurants. There's a Buddhist temple, like one of the oldest kind of hippiest grocery store in Toronto is there. It's just really varied and eclectic, and I think also people of all different backgrounds and also income levels. I think a lot of my friends have moved up to more expensive neighborhoods, where houses are detached, where we are, your houses are attached.

Speaker 4:
[01:48] We share a fence and we share basically the same backyard, and our porches overlook each other, and she says she wakes up and hears my kids as we're going off to daycare, and which I apologize for.

Speaker 1:
[02:00] I know what time it is by hearing the boys in the backyard, and one of them is a real chatterbox, so I love it.

Speaker 4:
[02:07] There's been moments when our three-year-old was out playing in the backyard, which is all fenced in, I should note, and I came in inside to get something, and I looked back out and he wasn't there. So, I had that kind of parental panic, and he had opened the gate and gone next door to see Cathy, and they adore her, and they adore her dog.

Speaker 1:
[02:30] I think the dog is a big attraction.

Speaker 4:
[02:32] No. I think if you asked our five-year-old and our three-year-old, they would say that she's one of their very, very good friends.

Speaker 1:
[02:39] Oh.

Speaker 3:
[02:42] In the spring of 2025, Cathy and Harley were both in the middle of some big life changes.

Speaker 1:
[02:49] I had bought the house in 2004 with my partner, and we had split up just a year before all this happened. So I was kind of in transition.

Speaker 4:
[02:58] Yeah, and we were, my wife was, you know, six or seven months pregnant with our third kid. And after having had two kids, I think those months before, it gets quite quiet in a way. And you kind of focus down on what you need in preparing the house for the arrival of a new baby. And so this all happened at a time when we were definitely least expecting this big mystery to quite literally appear at our doorstep.

Speaker 3:
[03:31] So before this big mystery started, how well would you say you knew each other?

Speaker 1:
[03:36] Not as well as we do now.

Speaker 3:
[03:40] I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Love. One morning, in early April 2025, Cathy stepped onto her porch to get the mail.

Speaker 1:
[03:56] It's Toronto in the spring, so it's just a welcome relief that it's not freezing cold out. And went to check my mail, and instead of finding the mail, I found a takeout bag with the name Rodolphe on it. I picked it up, and then inside was a half-eaten little container of French fries. And I didn't think much of it. I was just super irritated. Who on earth would... Our houses are up quite a bit from the street, like maybe 20 steps. Someone had literally come up to my porch and either thrown away the bag there, half-eaten and thrown away, or I have a bench on my front porch. They'd come there, sat there, eaten half their dinner at 2 a.m. on their way home from work, and then thrown it away and left. How rude.

Speaker 3:
[04:46] Cathy threw away the takeout bag. But she says she noticed the logo on it. It was from the fast food restaurant, A&W. I don't think that there are a lot of A&Ws here in America anymore.

Speaker 1:
[05:02] Really?

Speaker 3:
[05:03] It's a root beer place. A&W root beer, that's what I think about when I think about A&W.

Speaker 1:
[05:07] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[05:08] Yeah, they're known for their root beer. You get a hamburger and fries and a frosted glass mug of a root beer.

Speaker 3:
[05:17] Would you say A&W is one of the most popular fast food places in Toronto?

Speaker 1:
[05:24] No.

Speaker 4:
[05:25] It's up there. Really? Yeah, I would say so.

Speaker 1:
[05:27] Okay. I'd go McDonald's, then Harvey's.

Speaker 4:
[05:31] I would say A&W is up there with McDonald's, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[05:33] I'm deferring to Harley on this one.

Speaker 3:
[05:36] The next morning around 7 AM, Cathy was back on her porch to check her mail.

Speaker 1:
[05:42] And there again was almost the exact same scene. The bag from A&W with the name Rodolphe on it, and inside was a half-eaten container of french fries. And it was at that moment that I went from being irritated and thinking how rude this person was to being a little concerned. I live on my own. My dog doesn't bark at anyone. And it had to have happened in the night because there was nothing there when I went to sleep and it was there in the morning. And it was the exact same thing. There was this person, Rodolphe, coming and eating his dinner on my porch. And why did Rodolphe choose my porch? Which is quite inaccessible from the street. So that's when I started getting a little weirded out. And I think it was at that point where I texted Harley, his wife and another neighbor and just said, hey, did you guys see anything? I've woken up again. This is the second time somebody's sitting on my porch eating their dinner. And it was creepy.

Speaker 3:
[06:59] What did you think when you got the text from Cathy, Harley?

Speaker 4:
[07:03] I mean, I think my wife was very sympathetic, probably initially more so than I was, I hate to say. And she was quite concerned and was like, that's very disturbing. That's creepy. I made a joke that I was going to put our two kids on neighborhood watch and send them to the window, which they promptly did. And I sent a video to Cathy with my two kids at the window looking for some mysterious person eating French fries outside. And I think it wasn't until the third bag showed up the next morning, when I went from, okay, that's a bit weird, you know, two is kind of a coincidence, three is getting quite strange here. And these weren't random pieces of garbage, these were the exact same item.

Speaker 3:
[07:56] Three takeout bags of French fries from A&W, all with the name Rodolphe. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. Support for This is Love comes from Quince. It's time for spring cleaning, and maybe you're looking to clean out your closet and get rid of old clothes you're no longer wearing. If you want to update your closet with reliable, affordable pieces you can wear year after year, you might want to consider Quince. Quince makes beautiful, everyday pieces using premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and super soft denim, with items starting around $50. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable and effortless. The kind of things you can throw on and instantly look put together. I have a lot of Quince items myself, including their pants and long sleeve shirts made from linen. They're breathable and perfect for spring and summer. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/this is love for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com/this is love for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/this is love. Support for This is Love comes from Shopify. If you're thinking about starting a business, maybe you can't help but ask yourself the question, what if I fail? But what if you don't? There's only one way to find out. You can make it happen with help from Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce, from businesses just getting started to household name brands. Shopify can help you with everything from payment processing to analytics to website design. When you're just starting out, you can choose from hundreds of templates to create a great looking website. Shopify offers e-mail and marketing tools that can help you get your name out there and stay connected with customers. If you ever need help, Shopify's 24-7 award-winning customer support has got your back. You can turn those what ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. You can sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/this is Love. You can go to shopify.com/this is Love. That's shopify.com/this is Love. After finding a takeout bag on her porch three mornings in a row, Cathy decided to turn her porch bench to face the house instead of the street. She thought maybe whoever was eating French fries on her porch in the middle of the night would now be less interested in sitting there. The next morning, a Saturday, Harley walked outside to check the weather before taking his kids to the park and looked over at Cathy's porch. Under her bench there was another bag, from A&W, with the name Rodolphe written on it. He texted Cathy to tell her. She texted back, You have to be kidding me. Cathy decided to leave a note for the person who seemed to be eating on her porch. Before she went to bed that night, she left it at the top of the stairs. It read, Rodolphe, stop throwing your garbage here. Thank you.

Speaker 4:
[11:35] Very polite.

Speaker 1:
[11:36] I just thought it was the most direct way to approach the situation.

Speaker 4:
[11:42] Sunday morning, I woke up and my wife and I have a routine where we get up pretty early. We make coffee, you know, I typically read the news and have an hour of bliss before all the kids wake up. And by that point, before I could do anything, I had to go outside and check if there was another bag of French fries on Cathy's porch.

Speaker 3:
[12:03] The porch was empty. Harley thought maybe the fries had stopped coming. But then he noticed something odd.

Speaker 1:
[12:11] When I wrote that note to Rodolphe, asking him not to sit on my porch, Rodolphe, instead of leaving the French fries, just dropping them on the ground, stuffed them in my mailbox.

Speaker 4:
[12:22] So when I saw that there was another, it definitely tripped something in me that we need to kind of take this to the next level. You know, I think everybody has a moment when they go from being curious about something to be obsessed with something. And I think it was in that moment where I started to get a little bit of that obsession. And I, at that point, I just had to kind of try to figure out what the heck was going on here.

Speaker 1:
[12:53] Which was very reassuring for me, because before it was just my obsession.

Speaker 4:
[12:57] Right.

Speaker 1:
[12:57] And now it's like, well, two people are in this. Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:00] Harley texted Cathy that they needed to compare all the takeout bags. Cathy responded, damn, she said she had already thrown most of the bags in the garbage.

Speaker 4:
[13:11] That's when I came over and you had all these pieces of garbage on your kitchen island.

Speaker 3:
[13:18] They straightened out the takeout bags that Cathy had fished out of the trash and started comparing them. They all looked identical. A&W logo, one order of fries inside, and the name Rodolphe written on the bags, which had all been folded down and sealed with tape. They started going over their theories. Cathy told Harley she was feeling nervous.

Speaker 1:
[13:43] This is when I started, like I never lock, I often don't lock my house doors, but my house doors were locked, but I started locking my bedroom door because it actually had creeped me out at this point.

Speaker 3:
[13:54] Later that day, Cathy realized that the French fries had started coming after she'd put up a sign on her lawn for a political candidate.

Speaker 1:
[14:03] We were heading up to a really important election. In context kind of globally, Donald Trump had been elected and he kept on with this 51st state rhetoric. There was really high emotion running everywhere. I was the only yard sign, lawn sign on the whole street. No one else had signs up. My main theory was this was some guy on his way home from work, and he just stopped and had dinner on my porch. That was my main theory. But then as I got more and more freaked out, I think my theories got a little wilder, and the more creeped out I got, the more convinced I was that I was being targeted.

Speaker 4:
[14:51] My theory was, no, maybe this is just a raccoon who's doing this, or maybe this is a squirrel, or maybe that's where I came in with the animal theory.

Speaker 3:
[15:01] Harley had read that squirrels sometimes leave things outside people's houses. Some people have reported finding things like nuts or stones, possibly delivered as gifts in exchange for being fed.

Speaker 4:
[15:15] Even though kind of deep down I knew that that was not, or very, very unlikely that the same squirrel was going to the same garbage bin night after night and pulling out the exact same piece of garbage and depositing it on your front porch in the exact same situation, I was getting a bit concerned that you were getting worried, as you said, locking your doors. And I definitely floated that idea as just a perhaps.

Speaker 1:
[15:40] This brings down the temperature slightly. From boiling to. Slightly.

Speaker 3:
[15:45] Cathy and Harley decided they had to test their theories.

Speaker 4:
[15:50] And so the first thing we tried was we had this old baby monitor in a cupboard. And so we, I pulled it out and it was just a really simple camera and asked Cathy if it was okay to set it up on her porch and I kind of hid it inside a plant pot so whoever was doing this wouldn't notice it.

Speaker 1:
[16:11] So Rodolphe would not see himself being filmed.

Speaker 4:
[16:13] Right.

Speaker 3:
[16:14] The baby monitor couldn't automatically record what was happening on Cathy's porch and save it. But it would send a notification to Harley and his wife's phones whenever something or someone moved. The next morning, Harley woke up at 5 a.m. and checked the baby monitor. He didn't see anything unusual. But a few hours later, Cathy texted him that there was another bag on her porch. They kept the baby monitor up. Are you talking to anybody else in the neighborhood about this asking them questions?

Speaker 1:
[16:50] I mean, I have dog-walking friends and I definitely, I mean, anybody who saw me heard all about it. And everybody I talked to, I was like, have you ever heard of this happening like with French fries on the porch? And but I wasn't getting that anyone near us had had this happen.

Speaker 3:
[17:05] One of Cathy's friends suggested she should call the police. Cathy thought that was an overreaction. She texted Harley about it. He responded, overkill at this point. Instead, Cathy decided to call 311, a non-emergency line, and got a woman from the city on the phone.

Speaker 1:
[17:25] And then I was telling her the situation. I'm calling to report French fries on my porch, which feels so ridiculous to tell anyone. But then when you say, yeah, but it's, you know, by that point, what, I don't know, six nights, same time, someone's name on it, right? It seems so ridiculous. And yet. And, you know, she's like, well, you can call the local police station and tell them about it. But then I was telling her a little bit about Harley and our, you know, what we were doing at Howard. And she was just so amazed. She was like, everybody who calls us and neighbors are involved. They hate their neighbors and they're in the middle of fighting about something. She's like, I have never had this kind of conversation where the neighbor is positively involved.

Speaker 3:
[18:13] Since the baby monitor hadn't produced any clear results, they decided they needed to try something different.

Speaker 4:
[18:20] My first idea was to tape a piece of thread across the top step on your porch.

Speaker 3:
[18:25] So are you talking at like shin level? So it would be higher?

Speaker 4:
[18:28] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[18:29] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[18:29] Yeah, sort of six inches off the ground. Not that anybody would actually trip on it or hurt themselves. But if it was broken in the night, then we knew that someone was actually coming onto her porch and not throwing garbage up there. But then Cathy said, well, you know, it's possible a raccoon could trip that.

Speaker 3:
[18:49] Harley says he thought about it for a bit. Then he texted Cathy.

Speaker 4:
[18:54] Do you have any flour? And she texted back, I have baking soda. I don't know why my brain went here. I think it was probably from watching crime dramas and, you know, the scenes in those shows where they're dusting for fingerprints or they're looking for footprints in mud or snow or dust or whatever. But one night, you know, as the sun was setting over the city, we were out on her front porch sprinkling baking soda on her wooden steps. Because in my mind, there was only one way to show that this was a human and not an animal, and that was to track them to see if we could get a footprint. And so we had this kind of two pronged.

Speaker 1:
[19:40] Very high tech approach.

Speaker 4:
[19:41] Very high tech, where if the thread was broken, we knew something was coming onto our porch, and the baking soda was going to reveal what kind of footprints, what kind of creature was doing this.

Speaker 3:
[19:54] And what did you find the next morning?

Speaker 4:
[19:56] The next morning, I was pretty keen to get outside and see what had happened the night before. And lo and behold, the thread had been snapped. And in the baking soda were, as clear as day, footprints of a human sneaker. And so we had confirmed at last that this was not an animal, that this was a human going up onto her porch in the middle of the night and leaving bags of French fries night after night after night.

Speaker 3:
[20:28] So they examined the takeout bags again.

Speaker 4:
[20:31] And we realized that the bag itself, was was taped in a very particular way. It was taped closed in a very particular way. And if I would go to A&W or the drive-thru or just walk up to the counter and order a single order of fries, it would just come in a paper bag and I would walk away and eat my fries. This came taped closed in a way that suggested to us that, okay, maybe this wasn't picked up by some person. Maybe this was dropped off by one of the ubiquitous Uber Eats or food delivery app drivers that kind of circle the city at all hours dropping off food for people. And once we realized that, I think it gave you a bit of comfort.

Speaker 1:
[21:19] Oh, huge. I mean, that took the temperature down hugely.

Speaker 4:
[21:24] Yeah, because this wasn't somebody sitting on your porch.

Speaker 1:
[21:27] Yeah. It was still weird that it was coming. Like, why would you choose my address, right? Like, that still was creepy and that was still in the back of my head. But at least you hadn't walked up there and decided that you were sitting on my porch.

Speaker 3:
[21:41] But they still didn't know who was eating the fries.

Speaker 4:
[21:45] And this is where my wife comes in because at seven months pregnant, she wasn't sleeping all that well.

Speaker 3:
[21:51] Harley's wife, Elise, was awake in the middle of the night. When she got a notification on her phone, from the baby monitor, hidden in a potted plant outside Cathy's house, there was movement on Cathy's porch.

Speaker 4:
[22:05] So she clicked on the app and up popped a live feed of the camera on Cathy's porch. And there was the bag of French fries had just been deposited. So she noted that. And maybe 10 minutes later, the app notified her again that there was something else on her porch.

Speaker 3:
[22:27] We'll be right back. Support for This is Love comes from Mint Mobile. Most of us prefer to know where our money is going, but some big wireless companies make that difficult, surprising you with high bills and unexpected fees. Mint Mobile takes a different approach. They offer a premium wireless plan starting at just $15 a month, with high-speed 5G data plus unlimited talk and text included. And there's no need to switch your phone or your number. We have a friend who uses Mint Mobile, and he says it was very easy to activate. It only took him a few minutes to set everything up, and he's been saving money with his new plan. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com/phoebe. That's mintmobile.com/phoebe. Upright payment of $45 for 3-month 5GB plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

Speaker 5:
[23:39] Tax Act is here anytime you want to easily file your taxes. Tax Act is here for the early birds who like to knock them out as soon as the season opens. And for the procrastinators who like to wait until the very last minute. Tax Act is also here for the middlers who file right in the middle of tax season. No one ever talks about the middlers, but Tax Act sees you and Tax Act respects you. Tax Act, let's get them over with.

Speaker 3:
[24:09] When Harley's wife, Elise, woke up in the middle of the night, she checked the baby monitor.

Speaker 4:
[24:15] And my wife saw a raccoon, a very quick opportunistic raccoon who maybe by this point knew that-

Speaker 1:
[24:23] What are you doing every night? This is the time you should hang out here.

Speaker 4:
[24:26] And so then we saw, you know, we started watching these animals come to your porch, raccoons, squirrels, and dining every single night on these French fries, to the point where our kids were at the window asking us, what is that squirrel eating in the tree? And it was a French fry. And so that, at least, the camera had solved one question, which was who was eating the fries.

Speaker 1:
[24:54] Right. And it also explained why it was half eaten and the bag was ripped. Like, it answers a lot of questions.

Speaker 4:
[25:00] Yeah. So by that point, we had figured out that it was a human coming up, that animals were eating the fries, but we didn't know who Rudolph was. We didn't know why these single orders of French fries were being sent to your house, and we don't know why your house.

Speaker 3:
[25:20] The next morning, Harley decided to order a single bag of French fries from A&W while having his coffee to test the delivery theory. With the delivery fee in a tip, he says it cost him $10.58. Nineteen minutes later, the fries were delivered. Harley says the delivery person was already back on their e-bike by the time he opened his front door. The bag looked identical to the ones left on Cathy's porch. And then the next morning, there was another bag of fries in front of Cathy's house.

Speaker 4:
[25:57] So I dropped the kids off and then texted Cathy that after nine nights and nine bags of A&W French fries in your porch, it was time to go to the source. And so you got your dog and we walked to the nearest A&W. And the one thing that our trial test of ordering through A&W, the one thing it confirmed is it said the location where your order is being prepared. And so we knew most likely that what was being delivered to Cathy's porch night after night was coming from this A&W. So 8.30 in the morning, off we went. And A&W's fast food restaurants, they all look absolutely identical. They all have exactly the same design and decor and everything. And so we walked in, and it was kind of a quiet morning in there. And up to the counter and asked if we could speak to the manager. And this lovely fellow behind the counter said, well, I'm the assistant manager. And we said, perfect. And proceeded to present what had been happening over the past nine days. And he was bewildered. We gave him Rodolphe's name and he didn't present any theories, but what he did do was pull out his kind of tablet that had a record of every single order that they had processed. And so he started scrolling back, you know, back to two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, and lo and behold, there it was. Rodolphe, a time, and a single order of French fries. And we asked him to keep scrolling back to the night before and there it was again, Rodolphe, a time in the middle of the night, and a single order of French fries.

Speaker 3:
[27:49] The assistant manager told them the fries hadn't been ordered directly from A&W, but through Uber Eats. And so, he didn't have access to any information about Rodolphe, except his first name and the first letter of his last name. Cathy and Harley walked back home and placed another order for A&W fries, but this time through Uber Eats. They wanted to check if the bag would look the same as all the others. And it did. Harley, who is a journalist, got a hold of someone who had been a senior employee at a food delivery app to ask them their opinion. The person suggested that whoever was ordering the French fries could have been trying to scam a rewards program. Or the orders could have been placed by scammers testing stolen credit cards or credit card numbers. It's a scam practice called card testing, where scammers place small orders on credit cards to test if they're still active or have been canceled. Then they use the active cards for bigger purchases or sell them to other scammers. Harley also started looking for similar stories. In 2023, a number of people in one Los Angeles neighborhood had been receiving deliveries they never placed. Many of them lived on the same street. People in another part of Los Angeles had experienced the same thing. They received single orders of fries, breakfast sandwiches and pastries. Some people got a single bottle of water or a kid-sized carton of milk. One person said, every day, it's one milk in a bag. The deliveries were mostly from Starbucks and McDonald's. One person told the LA. Times that one morning at 7.30, they found three iced coffees on their doorstep. Quote, I was very caffeinated that day. The LA. Times reported that the deliveries lasted several weeks. Then they seemed to stop. But a few months later, they started coming again. Some people thought it might be some kind of a prank for a TV show or a promotion for McDonald's and Starbucks.

Speaker 4:
[30:14] The article didn't have any clear answers, but it did posit a few other theories. One of them being that this was some test or some exercise being conducted by a psychology university or psychology class somewhere. But the other one was, which I didn't mention to you at the time.

Speaker 3:
[30:36] Oh, God.

Speaker 1:
[30:37] I don't want to know.

Speaker 4:
[30:39] Was the theory that somebody was sending these single items as basically a low cost way to canvas a potential site for theft.

Speaker 1:
[30:52] Oh, wow. Thank God you didn't mention this.

Speaker 4:
[30:55] So if you keep sending a single order of something cheap to someone's porch and nobody is picking it up again and again and again, you know that nobody's home and therefore it could be a potential site for a break in. Well so then something curious happened. You went away for Easter, I think, for a few days. And so the last order was delivered on a Thursday. Friday it stopped. Saturday there was no French fries. Sunday there was no French fries. And Monday there was no French fries. But Tuesday morning I went out onto my porch to check the mail, assuming this was all done. And there was one more bag of French fries left on your porch. And so that's when we wondered, whoever was behind this, did they just take the four days of Easter off as a holiday? And they were kind of back to work, back to their scam on the Tuesday.

Speaker 3:
[31:49] That was the last time Cathy found French fries on her porch. Harley says the last bag was delivered right around the same time that he decided to send an email to Uber Eats. He told them all about Rodolphe and the strange orders of French fries.

Speaker 4:
[32:06] And within a couple hours, I got two emails back from Uber, from different representatives of the organization. And I think I was struck by, that's fairly unusual, to get two emails back from a company within 20 minutes of each other. And in my mind, that was like, oh, this is serious. And so one thing they confirmed was that this was some kind of fraud. And they said, quote, Uber takes reports of unsolicited deliveries seriously. They went on to say they had identified and banned the account behind what they called fraudulent orders. They also mentioned the words crime, fraudsters and illegal activity. And when I pushed them further to kind of give me a bit more information about what exactly was happening, they basically declined by saying, well, we don't want to give anybody any ideas, which I thought was really interesting.

Speaker 3:
[33:11] Tell me, what do you both think is the most likely explanation here?

Speaker 4:
[33:17] I think my leading theory was that your address was picked randomly and somebody's credit cards were probably being reused again and again, or multiple credit cards were being used through a single account as a way to test them for a bigger fraud.

Speaker 1:
[33:35] And that is also the theory that I choose to stick with, because that's the only one that lets me sleep at night.

Speaker 3:
[33:42] But they still wanted to figure out who Rodolphe was.

Speaker 4:
[33:46] And so what I suspected was that, you know, maybe this is a real person. Maybe this is just some innocent bystander like you, who had their credit card information hacked. Or maybe the Uber account itself was hacked. And so I just started looking. I had his first name. I had that first initial of his last name. And I guessed that maybe he lived in Toronto. And so I started looking online and came across a Facebook profile that seemed to match that, those parameters. And I reached out to him. I messaged him on Facebook. I sent a message on LinkedIn. I found a work email that I sent to, but he never wrote back. And I sympathize with him because he's presumably innocent in this as much as you are.

Speaker 1:
[34:35] And they've taken his identity and his credit card.

Speaker 4:
[34:38] Potentially.

Speaker 1:
[34:38] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[34:40] I mean, it's kind of frustrating that there's no clear answer.

Speaker 1:
[34:45] It's interesting that, right? Like, I think we all as humans want everything to be, you know, open and shut and closed and so neatly tied up. But I think there's something lovely in the mystery. I mean, I can talk to people for hours about this. I think the fact that it isn't just, you know, shut and closed, like, I think that adds to it. And I don't know, I feel like what I take from it is really get to know your neighbors. We've got so, I don't know, atomized. Like, we're all living in our own digital world. And I think we so overlook the power of neighbors.

Speaker 3:
[35:30] I'm surprised at you if you're going to get out your pith helmets and your flashlights and camp out, stay, and just say, all right, we're going to sit up. Was it kind of fun for both of you?

Speaker 1:
[35:44] Yes. Totally.

Speaker 3:
[35:45] Did you kind of miss it once there was no other thing to overturn?

Speaker 1:
[35:50] Hundred percent.

Speaker 4:
[35:51] I remember after when the bags finally ended, you sent me a text and it just said, I miss Rodolphe.

Speaker 1:
[35:59] I still do. I'm listening to this being like, wow, this was fun. Like the first few days, it was not fun. No. But post that, like, you know, you've got a partner in crime, you've got someone else who's thinking about it. Your kids got involved, your wife got involved. Like everybody was involved. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:15] And you live pretty close to each other. If you wanted to start a little detective firm, I would hire Harley ahead of anyone else.

Speaker 1:
[36:25] I mean, from what I've seen, Harley's your number one hire.

Speaker 4:
[36:29] Yeah, with baking powder in your thread. Yeah, brilliant. I think we all need a little mystery in our life to solve.

Speaker 1:
[36:36] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[36:48] This is Love is created by Lauren Spohrer and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Zagico, Lily Clark and Lena Sillison. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. You can learn more about the show on our website, thisislovepodcast.com, and you can sign up for our newsletter at thisislovepodcast.com/newsletter. Harley Rustad's article for Toronto Life is The Great French Fry Mystery. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus, now on Patreon. It's the very best way to support our work. You can listen to This is Love, Criminal and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes, behind the scenes photos and videos, and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other This is Love listeners. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook and Instagram at This is Love show. This is Love is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Love.