🧩 PART 1: The Phisher, the Pétrus, and the Pitch

This actually happened: a wrong number. A luxury wine order. A text exchange that spiraled into something… else...

   

    It started like any other phishing text: badly targeted, oddly polite, and suspiciously high-end. At 9:17 AM, during normal working hours, I received a message from someone named “Eliza.” She claimed she had ordered five bottles of 2014 Pétrus but had received 2004 instead.

Clearly, I’m not James.

But I let it sit...

Then, at the end of the following day, sometime around 8 PM, my wife was on a business trip (something to do with art), and I was home alone, slightly bored, having my one doctor-approved glass of red, I decided it was finally time to respond to that would-be wine phisher.

And I didn’t just reply Wrong numba...

I looped in ChatGPT to hone my prompting skills.

What followed was a surreal blend of luxury wine logistics, quantum investing, poetic metaphors, and escalating absurdity, all documented here, screen by screen. I call this: Front Stage. Everything Eliza saw.

Note: No names were changed, because none of them were real to begin with.

The exchange ended in Mandarin. Literally.

The final messages from Eliza, or whoever was behind the curtain, shifted tone fast. After a string of poetic flirtation, candlelit wine photos, and dramatic metaphors, the last line dropped in Chinese:

“我享受你妈个逼”

(an extremely vulgar insult about my mother)

Followed by:

“一会电死你”

(“I’ll electrocute you in a bit”) — an actual threat.

So, yeah. The velvet curtain dropped hard.

I reported the number to my mobile carrier (Mint Mobile). And then something strange happened.

The very next day… my phone number was retired.

No warning. No explanation. Just gone, like a tuxedoed lounge act who vanished halfway through a Sinatra cover.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Maybe not.

But it kicked off an entirely separate series of messes, one of which, is here:

 🔗 How Amazon Made Me Invisible Overnight

If this story ended there, it would still be weird. But it didn’t. Because while Eliza was throwing mystery, poetry, and shade, I was clearly collaborating behind the scenes with ChatGPT to turn the entire saga into a creative writing warm-up turned business flex.

The backend of this story: the ChatGPT conversation, might be even better than the screenshots above.

▶️ Read Part 2 (next week-ish):

How ChatGPT Helped Me Clap Back at a Wine Phisher—with Style

###