Few things feel better than doing your own sleuthing and feeling like a real-life Sherlock. Here, triumphant people share the most satisfying time they caught someone in a lie.
1. I once had a graphic designer apply for a post using my artwork in his portfolio. Asked him all about the work and the thinking behind the designs before I showed him the originals and the door.
BlatantBlunt
2. My 13-year-old daughter ran away from her mother’s home and appeared at my doorstep with a bruise on her face. She informed me her mother had backhanded her and bounced her face off the refrigerator door handle.
A year later while in court to gain sole custody of my daughter and representing myself, the court justice asked what is this abuse about. I told him of how my daughter showed up with bruises on her face. My ex stood up and shouted that she would never do such a thing to her child, “I couldn’t as a mother ever strike my child.”
Knowing my ex could never pass up an opportunity to correct me I told the justice, when my daughter showed up she informed me that her mom had backhanded her and bounced her face off the liquor cabinet. Without missing a beat my ex said, “It wasn’t the liquor cabinet it was the refrigerator. Sweet justice.
Sifu699
3. Lube tech at a Jiffy Lube tried to convince me that I needed a radiator service on a car that didn’t have a radiator. He even showed me a PH strip to “prove” that the fluid had gone acidic.
I told him if he could show me the radiator, I’d cheerfully pay for the service. His face when he opened my car’s trunk (where most cars keep their hoods) was pretty priceless.
Wintertash
4. I once knew a girl who claimed to have brain cancer. She was always using it to get sympathy from others and her bf and free things, while at the same time drinking and doing drugs. She would go to a party, do lines of cocaine and drink all night, and the next day complain on Facebook that her chemo was making her really sick that day. She would always use the “chemo excuse” to mooch pot off of people as well. Basically whenever she wanted a free bar tab, or to get out of something her bf wanted to do, brain cancer was her excuse. So one night I am at a Halloween party and she is there, using her fake brain cancer to get sympathy/ free things from guys.
She is sitting in the corner smoking weed, crying about how hard it is to have this kind of cancer, and how much the “blast radiation” makes her sick, and how each day is “a struggle”. Anyway, she gets up to walk to the bathroom, and in her high, drunken state trips and falls. Immediately a bunch of guys and her bf rush to her aid. “Sorry a side effect of the radiation is loss of balance.” This was the last straw for me. (continued)…
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I rushed over to her side and told her to stay on the ground, “I have first responder training, you’ve just fallen and your brain is in a very delicate state right now due to the blast radiation. Do I have your permission to help you?” “Yes please help me, I feel funny” she lies, loving the attention she is getting from the entire party. I point to her bf “Call 911, we need an ambulance here now, explain to them that she is undergoing blast radiation for brain cancer, she has taken a hard fall and could have suffered a head injury.” At this point she starts to panic, WHY ARE YOU CALLING 911? DONT DO THAT!!!! HERE LET ME CALL MY PERSONAL DOCTOR INSTEAD!! DONT CALL 911. I calmly tell her bf and the group of bystanders (our mutual friends) that she really should go to the E.R.. Of course he insists.
Long story short, the paramedics show up, we tell them whats going on and they take her to the hospital in the ambulance. We all get rides to the hospital and because we are such a large group are asked to sit in the waiting room. When the nurse finally comes out to the waiting room after her MRI to let us know that she’s fine, her boyfriend mentions the brain cancer. The nurse, of course, is completely confused by this question. The boyfriend prods for more info from the nurse and basically finds out in front of the ENTIRE group that she does not have brain cancer. Everyone WTF’s and leaves, including her bf.
Zenmasterkyle
5. When I was in college I had just gotten two new front tires for my car. A week later my back tire was punctured by a nail. So I went to the local tire shop to have it replaced.
Later that day they gave me a call:
Tire Shop: “The estimate to fix the puncture is X. Would you like us to repair it?”
Me: “Yes, please.” It was a reasonable price.
Tire Shop:”Also, I noticed that the treads on your front tires look dangerously low.”
Me: “My two front tires?”
Tire Shop: “Yes. They are at two-thirty-seconds of an inch low. This is legally worn down and they should be replaced. I can do it today for X dollars.”
Me: “So you are telling me that my two front tires are dangerously worn down?”
Tire Shop: “Yes.”
Me: “My brand new tires that I bought last week?”
Tire Shop: “Oh…”
Me: “Forget fixing the puncture. I’ll be by in a minute to pick up my car.”
sacheltry
6. Ex-husband: “No, I’m not having an affair!”
Me: “Well, then why do I have two hundred pages worth of IMs, texts and emails with sexual content sent between you and her?”
Him: “I, uh, I was hacked!”
Me: “For 4 and a half years?”
Him: “Y…yes?”
Me: “How did the hackers get these 37 photos of you nude?”
Him (and I kid you not!): “That’s not me.”
Spoiler: it was definitely him, birthmark, pasty fatness, and all.
Iarecylon
7. When I was a kid I played hooky from school once, and I called in to tell them I was sick. I pretended to be my father, and used my best impression of him, and it worked. I had duped the school secretary.
So anyway, I spent that whole day in town, just messing around with some friends who left school during study halls, and I went to get some ice cream.
While I was eating my ice cream, when I got a call from one of my classmates. I placed my cone in my shirt pocket, which was secure enough to carry, and picked up. She sounded a bit worried. She told me that my Uncle had recently come back from military duty for two years in Afghanistan, and that he had showed up during my English class to surprise me. He had gotten the news that I was sick, so he had left to visit the house.
I panicked and ran to get on my bike, forgetting that my ice cream was still in my shirt pocket. If he had just left, I could meet him at my house before he got there. I pedaled my hardest, going faster on my bike than ever before. I rounded the last block and was almost home free, when I saw him walk out of the house, disappointedly.
I thought maybe I could fib my way out of this situation, so as I approached, I was prepared to tell him I was out getting orange juice. But who steps out of the house but my mother and father, both ready to surprise their “sick” son, and wondering how he managed to get melted ice cream all over his nice collared shirt on a school day.
[deleted]
8. My ex told me she was sick and couldn’t go out with me that night. For some reason, her best friend was mad at her that night and called me to tell me my GF was cheating on me with a guy named Mike. She even told me what street he lived on.
So I drive down this street looking for her (very unique, personalized license plate) car, but don’t see it. As I’m driving away, I notice there’s an alley behind the houses. Sure enough, there’s her car.
I go back to the front door and knock. Some dude answers and I say “Is Mike here?”
“Yeah, he’s up in his room” pointing up the stairs by the door.
“First door on the right?”
“No, left.”
Then this dude just stands aside to let me in. (continued…)
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I walk up the stairs, open the door, and there’s my GF putting her shirt back on. “Hey guys, what’s going on?”
All she says is “WHAT THE HECK!” Dude is still in bed under the blankets. She goes into hysteria mode, asking me how I found her, how I got in, while this guy keeps saying “Dude, I did NOT know she had a boyfriend! Why didn’t you tell me?” over and over (he was a “little feller” and at the time I was in the Army and in the best shape of my life).
The situation was so messed up that I just had to giggle, but quickly returned to reality and walked out before I hurt someone. The roommate that let me in, even after hearing all the commotion, was sitting there playing Playstation. I nodded and said “thanks” as I walked out the door.
RichardBachman
9. We used to know this girl who compulsively lied about the littlest things, so we always wondered if she was lying about other things. Mainly we wondered if she was lying about having epilepsy.
Well, she faked a fit in front of a group of us once, at a party. She started pretending to shake, fell to the floor and so on. She then stopped, confirmed that people were looking and paying attention, and then continued. We told her to stop and that she was obviously faking.
She left.
Affero-Dolor
10. I do IT for a construction firm. We were rolling out 78 iPhones in one day to a bunch of our superintendents and corporate people. Everybody had to sign up in advance for a 15 minute time slot, and I mean sign up like WEEKS beforehand. After the deadline two weeks before the rollout day, we cut off the signups and ordered one phone per person that signed up. the phones were set up so that they’d already be attached to that person’s name, number, etc.
The signup sheet was just a document with write-only permissions. Nobody could remove or change anybody else’s name, they could only add their own.
On the day of the rollout, we have one of our higher-ups that’s a little pretentious walk into the room where we’re doing the deployment. There are lines and lines of people. He strolls in, claps his hands together, and says “all right, who’s got my iPhone?”
“Well, we don’t have one for you. You didn’t sign up. We ordered exactly enough, it’s only 10am and we’re already behind, and there are lines of people who signed up that are waiting to get theirs.”
“No, I definitely signed up! I have it right here in my calendar. This is the event that got auto-added to my calendar, look!”
Literally every person in that room knew that there was no automatically added calendar event, because the sign up only consisted of you writing your name on a page. “Sorry, the invitations didn’t work like that. You made that event yourself.”
He started fuming! Turned red, began several sentences, then gave up, turned on his heel, and walked straight back out that door.
Our non-corporate superintendents and all the other field people really appreciated us that day.
Ellimis
11. My boyfriend used to work third shift at a popular gas station on the East Coast. He worked with one of those notoriously terrible coworkers that calls in all the time with tons of excuses. Well, one night, she called out saying that she was sick, that she was vomiting and feverish, couldn’t come in, sorry. The only person available to work her shift was the district manager, who happened to be in the area for a meeting. DM comes in and works cashier with my boyfriend.
Around 3AM, who should walk in but the called-out coworker, wasted beyond belief. She bought two rolls of Tums and ate one while waiting in line. Waiting in line for the DM to ring her up…and fire her on the spot.
Nifferplz
12. One time my family’s company was throwing a company Christmas party at an upscale restaurant in NYC. We were in a private room upstairs but it wasn’t like there was security or anything like that, so anyone could and eventually did come upstairs to mooch.
Anyway, I’m there with several members of my family having a good time, enjoying some food and drinks, and getting to know people in the company. I’m sitting at a table with several employees I had just met, and two of my cousins who worked with them, when two guys come up to our table and introduce themselves. They were professionally dressed, were quite friendly. (continued…)
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They start asking people what they do, flirting with several of the girls at the table, and trying to act pretty alpha (they asked me what I did, which was graphic design at the time, and kinda laughed at my career choice). So being a few drinks in I ask what they do at the company, and they say that their family owns the business. I take a long look at the two of them, take a sip off my drink, and say.
“Oh really? I must have missed you at the last family reunion. By the way I’m Theodore Company’s Name , nice to meet you. The look on their faces was priceless. They put down their drinks and just walked out.
Atworkandwanttoreply
13. Back when I was in grad school, a girl in my group was ostensibly fighting cancer. Sucks right, having cancer on top of being in grad school? Adviser was super understanding, she got all the time off she needed, got funding so she didn’t need to teach classes. She flew back home to New York frequently for treatment. We all just assumed that she had a rich family (she did) and they had some specialist there that they wanted her to see.
Until…she posted a bunch of pictures of herself at the beach in Florida. While she was supposed to be getting cancer treatment. It was evident from the pictures that she was in great shape, not at all what you’d expect from someone undergoing chemo and radiation.
Turned out that she had faked the whole thing, and on top of all of it, was using the trips to cheat on her fianc who was in the military.
Worst part about all of it was that adviser didn’t kick her out and she ended up graduating, but she basically got shunned for the rest of her time there.
Gibonius
14. a friend was going through a rough breakup with a girl. He packed up and left the place they shared, she called him several hours later to say that she had tried to kill herself and was now in the hospital doped up on antidepressants and painkillers, and they did blood work and found out she was pregnant.
My buddy freaks out for a few minutes, then says “Wait. They would never give that crazy cocktail of medications to someone who just attempted suicide.”
No, no they wouldn’t. She admitted she made the whole thing up, but said he should really come back to her and make her feel better. This, he says, was the moment of clarity when he realized exactly what everyone had been trying to tell him for the years they’d been dating.
Data_wrangler
15. When I was in junior high, I had a “best friend,” let’s call her Kim, who basically treated me like crap. She was always insulting me, always bossing me around – basically she was just a crappy little person all around. I don’t really know why I was her friend, but I was.
Kim was also a RAGING pathological liar. She was constantly trying to one-up me with these huge, obviously not true lies, but since I was a pushover and she was my only friend, I usually just took it and pretended to believe her.
But one day, Kim told a lie and I decided I had enough.
She waited until we were at the bus stop with a bunch of other kids and started telling them a very elaborate lie about how she had been visited by God in a dream and was told that she was pregnant with the next Jesus Christ, and that the baby was the biological son of the most popular guy in school (who she knew I had a crush on). She went on and on and on all day about how she could now feel this child kicking in her womb and how God said the baby’s father was her soulmate and they would be married in a year’s time, blah blah blah, and some of the idiots on the bus actually believed her, or at least pretended to. I stayed quiet about it all day, nodding politely whenever she started in on her story about how she was the new Virgin Kim.
After school, I would always get off the bus at Kim’s stop and spend the afternoon at her house doing homework until my mom got home. That day was no different. I got off the bus with Kim, smiled and nodded enthusiastically as I listened to her jabber on about how she was supposedly inseminated with God’s holy creation.
“You’re okay with me being pregnant with Ryan’s baby, right?” Kim asked me as we started up her driveway. “I know you were kind of in love with him, but I feel like this is fate, you know?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.
“Okay, good,” Kim sighed with her smug smirk. “I mean, it’s not like you’re really Ryan’s type anyway, you know? He’s always hanging out with those really skinny girls.”
Jerk.
But I said nothing. I just nodded and smiled like I had done all day and followed Kim into her house, down the hall, and into her kitchen, where her mom was sitting at the counter reading a book.
“Hi, girls!” Kim’s mom sang out as soon as she saw us. I always liked her. “How was school?”
“It was fine,” Kim said.
“Did anything interesting happen?”
The polite smile on my face slowly crept up in the corners to a full-on Grinch smirk.
“Kim, why don’t you tell your mom the story you told everyone at school?” I looked into Kim’s eyes and could almost hear the sound of her stomach dropping. “About how you’re pregnant.”
I calmly sat in the nearest chair, folded my hands in my lap, and watched as the world burned down around me.
Hazelhallow
16. I went to a Chicago Bears game back in the early 90s with my childhood best friend and his grandfather who had had season tickets to the Bears for a long long time, back to 1972. We get to the seats, which are in an awesome location, to see four guys sitting in Grandpa’s seats. (continued…)
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My friend’s Grandpa tells them, “Guys, you are in our seats, can you please move?” One of the dudes is a huge jerk and says the seats are his groups. Grandpa says they are wrong and they need to move. To which one guy replies, “Oh yeah, well I don’t see your name on them so screw off!”
Grandpa points to the back of the seat on the seat nearest to him, which in fact has an engraved nameplate with Grandpa’s name on it, same with all the other seats. Since he had the same seats for so long he was able to get them engraved. It was amazing watching these four idiots stammer and walk away.
Jhp58
17. Years ago back in school I had a friend that often made up outrageous lies to get attention, but being her good friend I often believed her, or at least didn’t call her out on them as she was having a lot of home life problems and was a pretty lonely girl.
Said she had a secret boyfriend and would bring in a picture to show us, what she brought in was a badly cut out picture of Aaron carter from a magazine, which was glued to a piece of card so we couldn’t see the snippet of dating advice from a teen agony aunt on the other side.
Ascua
18. I work for a broadcast camera house – we rent out camera systems to shows, news, sports etc. A few years back, a client rented a few cameras and some specialty lenses – including one very rare, very expensive fisheye. Nice lens – it’s not made anymore, so replacing it isn’t possible, and fixing it will be extremely expensive. That was foreshadowing, by the way.
So, the package comes back at the end of the job, and the lens has a divot the size of a quarter taken out of the front element. I mean, this thing was trashed. I call the producer to have the “You broke it, we’re billing you to fix it” conversation. Within seconds, the conversation breaks down to the “This is BS, we never even used it, it never came off the camera truck, I can’t believe we’re being treated this way etc. etc. etc.” scream-fest.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the client had also rented a few tape decks. One of the still had a tape in it. On a whim, we watched the tape, and damned if it wasn’t footage from the camera with the lens in question VERY CLEARLY showing the truck driving into it. Big hit, too. Truck had to be going 25+ MPH.
I grabbed the tape and went to the producers office. Let him scream a bit (in front of about 10 other people – he’s the type that likes an audience) before showing them the tape. I made sure to shuttle back and forth a bit, slow it down, replay it a few times – also showed them the part where his name was visible on the slate. The look on his face was priceless. Ended up being a $20,000 repair bill. Never heard from him again. It was worth it.
Razor-dome
19. When I was 7 or 8, I was all about collecting Pokemon cards. I had a binder set up with the card protectors, pokemon stickers, my own personal pokemon drawings.. the whole shebang. My most prized card was my holographic Moltres. One day, I noticed there was a SCRATCH on the card and threw a fit like only an 8-year-old scorned knows how. I immediately asked my younger brother if he had been taking out my cards, which he vehemently denied. I started to think that maybe I had accidentally scratched the card which brought about a mini-existential crisis. I kid you not, I lost sleep thinking I couldn’t look after my Pokemon cards.
Anyway, the next day I’m at the bus stop with my brother and my neighbor when my neighbor starts talking about how cool my brother’s HOLOGRAPHIC MOLTRES is. I just stared at my brother and he started crying. Then I chased him down the street. But damn, that felt good.
Imyourplusone
20. My buddy was dating my roommate. They broke up which made it awkward for me. Well she goes all crazy on him and starts telling him she’s pregnant and it is his. After he told me this (we lived in a two bedroom, one bath) I started noticing that the stash of tampons my roommate kept under the sink were dwindling. Upon hearing this news from me, I’ve never seen a more relieved person.
KingHippoLSU
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21. I met this dude who wanted to join my band, and he was a huge Pearl Jam and Rolling Stones fan. So I had asked him If he was a fan of the band “Stone Sessions”, a band I made up on the spot. He told me he had every one of their albums. The look on his face was priceless when I told him I made up the band.
Joseadan88
22. I had a long argument once with someone who claimed loudly and angrily that Pat Morita from the original Karate Kid movies was a master of martial arts in real life. He came up with loads of “evidence” and even talked about stories of Morita single-handedly defeating hordes of attackers. Then I showed him an article where it talked about Morita spending most of his life as a stand-up comic with no martial arts experience, and he shut up.
EmperorBozopants
23. When I was young, I had these tiny magnetic figures (not sure what they are called). So anyways, I was at a friend’s house and I had just bought a new pair of them. When I was about to go home I noticed one was missing.
I got kinda sad and asked him if he had seen it. He said no. But I knew he was this liar type of guy, so I searched his pockets. I found it in his back pocket, and he started saying stuff like “I didn’t know it was there, must have been my brother”. I felt like a detective afterwards.
[deleted]
24. I worked in an IT department and had the option of taking some leave time as cash. This required submitting a form to my then manager, who had it in for me at the time. After several hours, I decided to take a stroll over to Accounting and talk to a fellow co-worker to see if she had received the paperwork. She hadn’t. I then asked if there would be any foreseeable problem with issuing me the cash. “Nope”, she said. “Just need the paperwork.” I went back to my desk and not five minutes later, my manager walked by the door on her way home for the day (at 1:30 no less) and told me that she had talked to Accounting and said they couldn’t issue me the check.
“Who did you talk to?” I asked.
“(Name)” she said.
“That’s funny,” I replied, “because I just spoke to her 5 minutes ago and she said it wouldn’t be a problem. Let’s go talk to her.”
“No, no….I’ll go talk to her,” my manager replied.
And wouldn’t you know it, I got my check 15 minutes later!
Scottishzombie
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25. Had an old 1984 Mazda 626 that had a rear wheel bearing die. Being about 18 at the time I didn’t know as much about cars as I do now, but I still knew enough to tell the mechanic at Canadian Tire was full of crap.
The car was pulled into the shop, they lifted it up on the hoist and the wheel fell off. It was still bolted to the brake drum, the bearing had just come apart, but I didn’t really know that. All we saw was the exposed internals of the rear brakes. The mechanic saw the look on our faces and thought “cha ching” as they received a portion of parts sales back then. A couple hours later he calls back and says he has a quote. I look through the list of about 15 items and the total of $2,600 and immediately called a tow truck.
I went through the list and pointed out five items that didn’t even exist on the car. Rear brake caliper, rear differential, etc. I tore into the guy and eventually his manager and told them I wasn’t paying a cent for the diagnosis.
I got the car home and, with the help of the Haynes manual, installed the $34 wheel bearings myself in about an hour and the car worked perfectly for about five more years.
Chromedragon79
26. I drive a very nice luxury/performance sports car, and on this particular night, I had driven it to a friends and parked it in an area that is easily visible to the street and is near a good amount of bars.
When I come back down, there’s this guy and three girls around the car, and he’s telling them he lives in the condos next to the lot and he just forgot his keys to the car up there. He keeps talking about being “VP of investments” for some company I’ve never heard of, and telling the girls they should “have a night on the town” with him because he’s paying”.
So I walk up to my car and he makes this disgusted face at me like I’ve just taken a crap on his feet, and goes “Don’t touch the car man, I just got it detailed yesterday!” to which I respond “Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to. It’s really nice car. I just wanted to look at it.”
He turns around to the girls and says something that he (and only he) thinks is funny and is motioning my way, when I put my hands in my pocket and hit the unlock button that also makes the car lights turn on (it was night time at this point). He jumped as if a gunshot went off, and the look on his face when I opened the door and started the car was priceless.
Biggie_smallest
27. An ex-girlfriend of mine called to tell me she was pregnant and that she needed money to terminate the pregnancy. I did the math quickly in my head and realized that there was no way she could be pregnant by me because we had stopped “having relations” long before we split. So, I told her that as “the father” I had rights, too, and that I wanted her to have the child and I would take full custody (and pay her medical bills). She was speechless and then said, “I’ll call you back”. She called a day or so later saying she had a miscarriage.
Friekman
28. A girl I go to school with did everything she could for attention. She walked into class one day with a huge bruise on her cheek, claiming that she had been punched in the face at a party. Fast-forward a few days and we’re both at a mutual friend’s house, she still has the “bruise” and wont stop talking about it and trying to make us feel bad for her. Upon looking a little closer, I see that the “bruise” is slightly sparkly. It’s obviously makeup.
So I tell her that I have something to put on bruises to make them heal faster, and she agrees to try it out. It was actually makeup remover. I put some on a cotton pad and with one swipe, the bruise was gone. At first she tried to keep the lie going, saying, “Wow! That stuff really works!” and such, but then she gave up and stormed out of the house throwing a fit.
Twlohaliyah