People Share Stories Of People Who Lived Double Lives And Finally Got Caught

Secrets and lies. Most of us have some in our past; little fibs and foibles from our life. But some people have whoppers.

Reddit user FOX_SMOLDER asked:

"What's the biggest double life you've ever personally seen revealed?"

Here are the shocking replies.

Drugs Are Bad

A well respected family of two teachers with two cute kids -- the husband at the high school and the wife at the elementary school in the fairly high-income town they lived in.

Turns out the wife was dealing drugs without husband knowing, got busted at school (cops showed up to elementary and high school), lost her job and they got divorced/she moved away. Danisue7

Drugs Are Really Bad

A good friend's father was found out to be huge in the cocaine trade. Not like a dealer on the streets, but smuggling into the country and helping distribute in California. The dad was a real normal dude, and very family oriented/present. He's in prison now. Blew my mind.

Drugs Are Really Really Bad

Earlier this year I learned my Dad has been addicted to heroin and stolen many expensive things from various members of my family. I knew that people had been getting things stolen from them but never even began to think it was my Dad. He did get help and is now five months clean, but still working and building up my family's trust again.

Chicken In More Ways Than One

There was one dad in our group that lost his high flying big city financial job due to a market crash. To pay the bills, and because there were no jobs in finance at the time, he took the first job he could get - in a chicken abattoir. Bit of a change from a desk job to slaughtering chickens, but when you have a newborn baby and bills to pay you step up.

Every time I ran into him I was always impressed with how much he was up to speed on current events and world news. We would talk about the latest political, financial and scientific news; there was not much discussion about chicken butchering.

Turns out he was fired on his first day (at the abattoir). Every day after that - for months - he would leave home in the morning, go to the pub, read newspapers all day, and then go home in the evening.

She eventually found out. They are divorced now.

Love Child

My cousin was a secret for 4 years.

When my uncle was 21 he and his girlfriend had a baby with out telling anyone in our large, very nosy family. No one suspected a thing and they went on dating.

When I was 8 and their daughter was 4, her adoptive parents were killed in a fire and left in their will that they wanted her to go back to her bio parents.

My uncle and his girlfriend sincerely regretted giving their daughter up and so they were thrilled.

Everyone just went with the fact that they were essentially keeping a secret child for 4 years and were pretty much ok with it.

My cousin is 14 now and she has 2 full siblings and my aunt and uncle are great parents. Every now and again someone brings up the situation but it's pretty much just laughed off. I do find it a little odd though. goldenmarigold

His First Wife

My grandmother passed away a couple years ago. While going through her house, my family found a box with my grandfathers name on it in his handwriting. My grandfather died before I was born. It was taped closed and the dust on it suggested it hadn't ever been opened.

Inside, my family found newspaper clippings and other documents.

Turns out that in the early 1900's, my grandfather took a road trip with friends to see the ocean. During their time at the beach, their car was stolen. They decided to stay awhile; being in their late teens and out of school, they decided to earn some money and have a good time.

My grandfather met a Mexican girl and married her within the course of a month. There was an article on the vehicle theft, as well as another on the marriage and a marriage certificate.

We could never find information on what happened next. We don't even rightly know if they married for love, to get her citizenship, if they had kids, or even if he was legally divorced when he married my grandmother in the 1930's. We don't think my grandmother knew.

We did find out his first wife returned to Mexico. She did have children (who say they don't think their mom had kids before she remarried). We sent them copies of the documents we found and they were as flabbergasted as we were.

When You're the Secret

My grandfather was in a romantic relationship with another man across the country for a few decades. My entire family knew about it, so it was no big deal... or so we thought.

Just last October, my grandfather died. We went to call his partner, and he was very surprised to learn that my grandfather had children. It's amazing how he hid an entire family for decades.

When Identity Theft = Survival

My (the Netherlands) great grandfather's family had an inkling that no amount of prosperity was worth risking what Hitler was spreading. He took his wife and 4 sons on a boat, settled in Illinois/Wisconsin border to just fine middle classism as skilled carpenters and other building tradesmen.

The family didn't realize till nearly 1970 that the house they just left without selling in Holland, the Jewish family of husband, wife, and 4 boys who lived next door moved in without asking, called themselves my family name (firsts and last), the local Protestant church had them every Sunday, they survived the Holocaust. Has any greater accidental zero effort hero ever happened?

On the Side

Fellow grad student has two young kids; one that is struggling to walk and communicate and is in the process of being diagnosed. She is pulling 10-16 hour days (between interning and classes) plus being a mom and wife. She gets a call from a friend that expresses how excited she is to see her at the husbands work party. What?! She didn't RSVP, and her husband said he would pop over for less than an hour then come home to be with her for a quiet dinner. Turns out he was bringing a date that wasn't her. They had been seeing each other for about 6 months and even had taken a trip together under the pretense of a business trip. Anytime he had been late or gone we assume he was with her. Friend did her a solid and took a couple pics for the divorce lawyer. meawait

The (Untrue) Stories He Could Tell

I worked with this guy once who was known for his stories. No matter how loose the connection was, he'd find a way to turn anything into a personal anecdote of a thing he'd seen or done before. All of them were interesting the first time (he'd lived an interesting life - grown up in America, moved to Australia in his early 20s, worked in a lot of really cool places over the years), but it wasn't long before he started repeating the same stories over and over again. I worked with him for just over three years, so it got pretty ridiculous. We knew how he'd met his wife, all the obscure things he owned, his pets, his kids - we knew every detail of his life.

It became a bit of an in-joke within the office about how the guy never shut up.

Then one day, he didn't come in. He'd died of a heart attack. The whole office was at a loss, especially our little department (which had about 8 people in it, including him). When it came to his funeral, our little group took the afternoon off and attended. And that's how we found out, none of his stories were true.

He'd grown up locally, his family wasn't at all who we thought they were, none of his old jobs had happened... Everything we'd known about him had just been made up.

The most interesting thing for me was that at one point, our boss needed someone to head to China to double check something in person at one of our company's factories. When the usual choices couldn't do it, he was picked. It seemed like a no brainier, since he was regularly going to and from America to visit family and had traveled a lot on his other jobs. We now think that may have been his first time overseas.

A Girl in Every Port

I served in the Navy from 1985 to 2005. While in my first squadron, from 1985-1989, we were away from home often, either on short detachments of 2-5 weeks or 6-month deployments. During one period when we were at home for awhile, I was on watch in the duty office after hours. Me and another guy just had to man the office, answer the phone, and monitor the guys on watch down in the hangar bay.

Shortly after our watch started we got a phone call from a wife of someone in our squadron. She was asking us when the squadron would be back from detachment. I asked the other guy if he knew about anybody out on det, and he just looked at me funny. I told her we didn't currently have anyone one on det. We've all been back home for a couple months. She insisted her husband had been out on det for 3 weeks and needed to know when he was coming home. I assured her nobody was on det, and told her I had seen her husband earlier that day at work. She just hung up after that.

Turns out, the guy was telling his wife he was out on detachment and shacking up with his girlfriend for a few weeks. She called the Commanding Officer to find out when her husband had been part of a detachment and found out he'd done it many times over the previous couple years. Infidelity is officially against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It didn't turn out well for him. jcpmojo

His Dad's Kind of a Big Deal

In one of my previous jobs a few years ago, we fired this guy who turned out to be a really good partner, worked hard, never complained. After about a year and a half of working with him I get called into the office, he's there with the manager, assistant manager and two beefy guys in normal clothes with the exception of ear pieces. He wanted to say goodbye to the bosses and I and explain why he had to leave the company. Turned out he was the son of some leader in his country and they had to relocate him; an opposing faction found out he was in our state and would have kidnapped him for leverage.

Exchange Student: Adult Ed Version

My family hosted a number of exchange students while we were growing up. We hosted about 7 high school students over the course of my childhood; each stayed for a year in our house, attended high school in our town etc. One girl, Irina, from Russia came to us no differently than any of the other students had - through the AFS program. To be a student through AFS meant you had to fill out an application, be 17-18 yrs old, be attending high school in your home country, whatever. So Irina arrives as our exchange student. She goes to high school in our small home town on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. But at Christmas time she says she has to go home to Russia because her mother was extremely sick. Going home during the exchange year is really unusual, really rare. So OK, fine, she's going to Russia for the Christmas break, nbd, she'll be back in January. Except she never comes back. AFS can't find her, we don't know where she is, if she made it to Russia, if she's hurt, nothing. And we're terrified because we're her host family during this year and we always took the students in like family. Anyways she's gone. Maybe 3 months later my mom is driving through our tiny town (again, middle of nowhere Cape Cod) and she sees Irina, with what looks like her mom, and some kids. Turns out Irina has graduated high school in Russia already, was like 25 with children and had posed as an exchange student so she could 'case' the place before bringing the rest of her family (to America).

You Always Hurt the Ones You Love

About 7 years ago my brother was struggling with addiction, using almost any and everything though alcohol was the (drug of choice). We have a really long family history of alcohol use disorders. He dropped out of school and spent a few years bouncing around treatment centers and sober living houses.

3 years ago he decided to move back (about 2 hours away from my parents' house) and get back into school. At this point he's a lot older than the kids in his classes and socializing is hard so he would come up to see the parents every Friday, Saturday, Sunday. He decided to go for a chemistry degree - every semester talking about his specific classes, the content of them, etc. He knew the class times, professors, talked about teaching styles, and like clockwork brought his dog to my parents for finals week twice a year so he could study without distraction.

My entire family came from all across the country for his graduation ceremony on Friday. We were all bursting with pride and excitement because my brother had just done what we all thought was impossible and graduated. Pre-ceremony none of us could find his name in the book. Then we couldn't find him walking among the students. About 30 minutes into the ceremony I got a call from him. He was drunk.

Turns out he never enrolled back into school. He just moved back, conned my parents into paying rent and utilities for 3 years, and spent 4 days a week boozing, gaming, and sleeping. No one knew this was going on. He invested so much into this double life that he had his whole family and all his friends fooled.

We're not sure what the next steps are, my husband and I are going to help my parents pack up his place tomorrow. It's hard to find hope with the level of deceit that went into his latest stunt. He's hurt so many people on this path but he's my brother and I love him nonetheless. Here's to a brighter tomorrow.

Stranger Among Us

So when I first left home in my late teens I shared a big house (I think 6+ bedrooms) with a close friend, his brother and some other randoms. Think frat house except no college/university. Splitting the expenses worked out pretty well. So one of the guys worked at a port in customs or something. He had a uniform and ID etc. Left for work at the same time every morning and hung out with us after work. He was always down for attending social events with us and most of us liked him. Fast forward about a year and he starts telling us about how he can get us discounted TVs and other merchandise from the port. Unclaimed/seized property that apparently no one sweats about if just a few items go astray. Everyone gave it a pass as it seemed sketchy. Then one day we come home to one of our housemates in shock and bawling like a baby. Turns out not only did he give the guy his life savings he also gave him money borrowed from his dad. The customs guy had said he could get him a new car cheap! The long long con. Turns out the guy doesn't work at the port, the name he gave us doesn't exist and we have no idea how he spent his days or came up with his share of the rent/bills. Still creeps me out a little knowing I lived with a stranger for so long.

Still Waters Run Very Deep

A friend of mine lives in San Diego and was recently telling me the story of her grandfather who has an entire family in Mexico that he kept hidden for decades. I'm talking he has kids that have kids and one of his secret granddaughters has ANOTHER kid. Dude is a great grandfather and nobody knew. Her grandfather is nearly 90s, so it's unbelievable how much a quiet old man can keep from people. Damien2001

The New Mom

My uncle runs a business hooking up internet in hotels. He travels all over the West coast for it. Recently he asked my aunt to have an open relationship. Turns out most of his "business trips" were actually trips to go meet with his business partner, whom he has been having an affair with for the last year or two. This business partner has even had two pregnancies with my uncle. Both were miscarriages, but both were also INTENTIONAL.

My aunt and uncle have been married for 12 years, and have a five year old son. My aunt also has terminal cancer. He's been introducing their son to his mistress as their son's new Mommy without my aunt's knowledge.

Needles to say, that open relationship isn't happening. They're getting divorced.

Fractured

My sister-in-law had a second child. She was still married, but separated with her husband (because she caught him cheating). The man with whom she had the baby was her father's old prodigy, who was also married with a couple of kids.

This all took place in China, while the one-child policy was in full effect.

So: to her parents, the separation and affair were secret, up until she had a baby. Once they were looped in, they helped her to maintain the lies, because 'face'. From her ex-husband's perspective, the child and the affair were secret; from the perspective of his family (with whom she remained in touch), the separation, affair, and baby were secret. This was complicated by the fact that they shared custody of their first kid (in fact, they pretended they were still living together for years). So the older kid was warned not to mention his brother to his father, while spending plenty of time with both. It was all a secret from most, but not all of their close family (i.e. cousins, aunts, and uncles). And then there was the prodigy's family, and really the rest of the outside world, for whom there was no separation, no affair, and certainly no kid. That included the government. I'm not even sure how that worked.

She wasn't living another life. She was living fractals of lives within lives. Just try to imagine the logistics of getting your nonexistent kid to school (under a false identity?) in time to pick up your older kid, who was waiting with your secret lover, so that he could get back to his real family, and you and your kid could meet up with your cheating ex-husband, so that you could all drive together to lunch with family from both sides, doing your best impression of a perfect family who had come straight from a shared, loving home (while being careful that neither you nor your older boy mention to anyone that you have to pick up your other son from school soon).

Home (un)Schooling

There was this kid at our church who started attending the youth group when he was about 15. Everyone loved him, but he was always a little standoffish. Fast forward 3 years to graduation time. Everyone kept asking him what he planned to do after high school and if he was looking forward to it, but he always changed the subject. Finally, he revealed to one of the adults that he wasn't graduating because he hasn't been to school since he was 8 years old. His dad removed him from school and never let him return.

A whole bunch of s* went down after that, but the church members helped him do a fast-track high school degree in 3 years and have now paid for him to attend a 4 year university.

Fugitive

A counselor at my college in Michigan faked his identity for over 40 years. He was a civil rights organizer in San Francisco in the 1960s and ended up in a shoot out with police.

None of the police were injured but he was shot in the foot apparently. He was supposed to appear in court later but he took off, and in the 40+ years following the shooting, he earned his masters degree with a whole new identity, ultimately working as a guidance counselor at a community college in Michigan.

His true identity was exposed around 2010 and he went on trial for the shooting in California. He was sentenced to a year in jail and about $8,000 in fines.

He was a nice guy, you'd never expect anybody who's seemingly normal actually being an old school fugitive on the run. TazzzTM