No matter the circumstance, lying is never cool. First of all, it's just way easier to tell the truth because you don't have to keep track of your web of lies. Second of all, lying hurts people and can tear friendships and families apart. Still, there's something so satisfying about catching a liar in the act. Not only do you get a huge sense of relief when you know the truth, but it also feels like sweet justice is being served when you expose the liar for who they really are.
These Redditors share the most satisfying times they were able to catch someone in lie. Content has been edited for clarity.
Oh Baby!
“A girl from high school added me on Facebook. I was looking through her profile to see what she was up to, as it had been a few years. She was apparently pregnant with twins (at least three posts a day about how she was feeling being pregnant, going to buy baby clothes, having ultrasounds). She had also put up some ultrasound pics.
Now this girl has always seemed to elaborate the truth; inventing boyfriends and other stories. I guess it was to make her life seem more interesting. Because of this, I was suspicious (and bored). So I reversed image searched the ultrasound pics and after a few minutes found them on a stock photography site! I joked about this discovery to some mutual friends, but then kinda forgot about it. A few weeks later, some more pictures go up, again taken from somewhere else. It was kind of making me mad as she was fooling all these well-meaning people giving her advice and sympathy, including a woman who was unable to have kids…
I did think about calling her out on it to everyone publicly, but I thought she was probably in need of psychiatric help for her to create such elaborate lies for so long. I privately messaged her, she admitted she was lying and told me she was seeking help and getting medication for it (probably also lies). She then told me the only way to fix the problem was to pretend she had a miscarriage, which I saw her post on Facebook. A few weeks later, all the posts referring to the babies were removed.
I left it at that. Now she’s blocked my access to her page, so I guess she doesn’t want me calling her out on stuff again.”
The Phantom Pooper
“In high school, I worked for a summer recreation program that had a pretty colorful cast of campers. Everything’s fun and games until it happened: The Phantom Pooper made his first move. Every day, every single freaking day, someone was pooping and using it to paint a masterpiece on the bathroom walls.
Our site director hatched a plan to catch the culprit; each staff was to take a shift outside the bathroom to monitor the poop situation. Great, easy! Yet somehow, it was STILL HAPPENING.
The director had some suspicions about who it was, but couldn’t prove anything… until she hit her breaking point. The bathroom wall was found covered in poop for the umpteenth time, and the director marched right into the art classroom where a big group of the kids were hanging out, suspect included. She started a mandatory game of ‘Simon Says.’
‘Simon says touch your knees…Simon says clap your hands…Simon says SMELL YOUR FINGERS.’ Cue the room full of kids gleefully smelling their fingers…EXCEPT THE SUSPECTED MYSTERY POOPER.
It wasn’t enough proof to rat the kid out to his parents, but the look of horror on his face when he made eye contact with the director and realized she had figured him out was phenomenal. You could practically see her dusting her hands off. Mystery of the Phantom Pooper solved.”
Pathological Liar
“I moved to Chicago and my wife befriended a girl at school right off the bat. She became a big part of our life, particularly since we didn’t really know many people in the city. After just a few months, we were seeing her almost every day.
Fast-forward two years: my wife and I are just about to buy our first home. She is living in a nice new apartment with our good friend from back home (her old place burned down AS HE WAS DRIVING UP to move in with her!) and she is suffering from her third bout with cancer. This one is really, really bad. She has to do some experimental chemotherapy to get it taken care of, but here’s the thing: some clerical error botched her insurance! She isn’t covered, and they are threatening to deny treatment if she can’t come up with the money to pay for it. Her family has given all they can give, and the balance has gone down from exactly what my wife and I were going to spend on our new home to something like $5,000. She leaves my wife many sobbing messages about how she is giving up hope and may as well curl up and die.
My wife, being the incredible person she is, rallies everyone we know to help her! She sets up a PayPal donation blog and hundreds of dollars start pouring in. Her former boss even cuts a check for a thousand bucks!
Having grown suspicious, I refused to allow my wife to transfer any of this money over to our sick friend until we got definitive proof that this is legitimate. I insisted that she accompany her on a trip to the hospital, which was canceled at the last minute. I eventually tracked down a phone number and call the girl’s dad and ask him how to ‘best get the donation money to the hospital.’
He freaks out and tells us she doesn’t have cancer. She is snatched up and re-institutionalized. Turns out, she’s done this before! Twice! She’s a pathological liar and (over months of reviewing our relationship with her and describing the situation to various medical professionals) a sociopath.
There was no fire, there was no cancer, there was no abusive, cheating ex-fiancé (who probably started the fire). Those brakes didn’t ‘mysteriously stop working for six blocks,’ she was just embarrassed that she ran a stop sign. She never had MRSA. A million other little lies slowly revealed themselves in the months after, in the clear light of hindsight.
We’ve never seen or spoken to her since.”
The Truth Always Comes Out Eventually
“I used to use an online forum and there was this guy who was always posting pictures of his cool car and super smoking hot model girlfriend. Only, the girlfriend was ACTUALLY dating my best friend at the time, and lived nowhere near where this guy did. My best friend is a tall, goofy, and charming as heck (think Van Wilder), so he is capable of pulling in absolutely fiendishly hot women.
He had just found some random image online of her (her glamour shots were pretty popular even though they were non bare booty), so I got to bust him because I knew the girl’s actual MySpace page that said where she was and who she was dating.
Some other users found his pictures of his car on a different car forum altogether, which were also lifted by him.
He went down in flames, though obstinately claiming he wasn’t lying until he just deleted his account.”
Family Gatherings Must Be Really Awkward Now
“My father called me up one day all angry because he couldn’t get into his gmail account. Instead of wasting time trying to figure out what his malfunction was, I asked him for the last four of his social so I could just reset his password and get him in.
I had no idea gmail would automatically log you in after doing the password reset. Upon logging in, I see emails from my ex-girlfriend dating back at least a month or more.
She had broken up with me a few weeks prior.
The one little summary line that will forever be burned into my memory was: ‘I can’t believe the way you touched me last night.’
Needless to say, my therapist earned quite a bit of money in the following weeks.
Oh, and they got married two months ago. Yeah, that’s right, my ex-girlfriend is now my step mother.
I have no contact with either of them. YAY FAMILY!’
Problem Child
“Recently, my brother (aged 15) kept getting parcels delivered. Whenever we asked where he was getting the money to get this stuff, he said by selling games consoles he’d bought cheap for profit or doing chores. I was always suspicious about where he was getting all this money from since he hadn’t been doing any jobs, but I couldn’t prove it at the time. My mum had recently been noticing her credit card kept getting overdrawn and went and checked back through her transactions and noticed that one of them said Fortnite. She initially thought her card might of been hacked, but then she remembered that he kept getting all these parcels and that he had recently bragged about his new Fortnite outfit. This made my mum come to me as ask about it and I noticed that the amounts of money lined up with some of the items he’d bought. We would eventually prove that it was him by comparing his eBay account history and some of the purchases were named in the actual transaction. She went back through her card history and realized he’d managed to spend around $4,000 on stuff he wanted. He kept denying it, but eventually sent the lamest email to my mum admitting it.
About two weeks later, my mum got an email saying that he’d cheated on his assignment and they had managed to track down the exact website he’d copied from so he failed that assessment. My mum found out while he was on his way home from school and asked me if she should text him about it. I said wait until he gets home, otherwise he might not actually come home. So he gets home and being the idiot he his, he rung the doorbell like 10 times (was very annoying) then I opened the door and he looked all happy and oblivious. I had to turn around to avoid laughing at the verbal whooping he was about to get. So my mum told him that we know he cheated, even though he still denied he ever did anything wrong even though it was blatantly obvious he knew he cheated.
Basically, he’s now a slave until he pays back all that money. He’s also doing poorly in school and will likely have to repeat. Hopefully, that’ll convince him to get his life together and stop being a lying idiot.”
Relationships Like This Are Toxic
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“During my mid teens, I was dating a girl…and she was freaking psycho. She would guilt trip me with self harm and take ridiculous amounts of paracetamol to OD and say things like if she couldn’t have me, she would rather die. I didn’t want her to die, so I just floated about in what was a vague resemblance of a relationship.
Fast forward to my 17th birthday: she calls me and says she’s ill and can’t see me because she had OD-ed. I was like cool, get better. At this point, I was just happy I could spend my birthday with my friends in peace without her talking about her depression, etc.
However, as my mates and I walked down the road that day, we saw her and a friend on a double date and she was kissing some dude at the bus stop. I see her, her friend sees me, she looks at me. A stare off ensues. I told her to never contact me again. To be honest, it was a relief. I finally had a valid reason to tell her to bug off. I blocked her, but she and her friends would call from random numbers threatening she would self harm and commit suicide if I left. I pretty much just told them to bug off, too.
After about three weeks, all contact stopped.”
Cheaters Never Win
“My soon to be ex-husband told me he had to go on an emergency work trip to Michigan. I could tell he was lying, so I checked his phone records and saw that he had called a cabin rental company a couple of days before. I called them and cancelled his reservation, not for the first night but for the second night so they could rent the cabin out. And they did, so he had to come home early to me telling him he had 10 minutes to get his stuff and get out of my house.
We have a daughter, so I wanted to be slightly vindictive but not enough for him to be able to use it against me in a court of law (cue Law & Order theme song).
Turns out, he went up there to see one of his vendors from work. And to top it off, I know her. She knitted a freaking snowman hat for my daughter last Christmas (which I’ve since thrown into our fire pit and lit on fire).
I’m doing okay now. It’s hard some nights, and I know it will be harder when he gets his own place and I have to let him take our daughter. Right now he comes over here to see her, so that sucks big balls.”
Security Cameras Exist For A Reason
“Before taking her job as a keyholder (basically a manager), my old boss, Shirley, was extremely lazy and would make up stories all the time to cover up she did absolutely nothing. It had gotten to the point where she persuaded me to do her manager duties while she just stood behind the counter all night, which was sad because I did everything better than her with less training.
Anyway! To the story! If you don’t know, if a fire marshal enters your store and sees that one of your exits are blocked, your store can basically be shut down, fines issued and the store manager fired for negligence. Well, the day after Shirley started her leave for a week (recovery off surgery), I saw that the store manager was absolutely angry to the max. When I asked what was wrong, she told me that not only was trash left on the floor but also that Shirley left a container filled with stock in front of the fire exit. The store manager made a note on the white board about it for ‘all employees’ and included the date of the incident.
A week went by, Shirley came back, and we worked night shift together. She saw the note on the board and asked about it. I nonchalantly told her that someone left a container in front of the fire exit and the store manager figured out it was on the date of Shirley’s last shift.
Shirley: ‘That happened the night I worked?’
Me: ‘Yeah.’
Shirley: ‘Oh, it must of been (other cashier). My leg (what she has surgery on) was hurting, so she offered.’
This was already strange because cashiers aren’t really allowed to go to the back of the store in case of a customer. Of course, Shirley could of covered the register so I didn’t think much of it.
The next day, the store manager asked about the shift and I told her what Shirley said to me. Without a word, the store manager turned our store security cameras on and showed me video proof of Shirley being the one leaving the container in the clearly ‘off limits’ area.
Another thing is that (other cashier) has some mental issues stemming form brain surgery she had, which just sort of made her slower and doesn’t really understand jokes. So not only did Shirley lie, she blamed the semi-mentally challenged employee of ours…
I guess she forgot we have cameras.”
Congratulations, You Played Yourself
“I am in college and I just moved into my first apartment. With college comes lazy kids. In my apartment, we have these little garbage bins outside of our doors that the trash man comes and gets the trash out of. The trash compactor is a good five minute walk and is down three flights of stairs because I live on the third floor. What lazy kid is gonna wanna do all that when they can just put their trash is somebody else’s bin?
One day, I go to take out the trash to put it in the box and somebody put their nasty trash in my box. It spilled EVERYWHERE and was just thrown in there. Using some context clues to figure out who left my bin a mess, I walked around to the other three apartments on my floor and looked in their bins to see who’s was full and who had the same trash bags.
Finally I see the same bags in one of the other units and the bin is stuffed to the brim. I calmly walk inside and get a piece of paper and write something along the lines of ‘keep your trash out of our bin thanks’ and tape it to their window. Then I put on gloves and pick up the trash out of my bin and place it on top of theirs. I walk outside later that night to see a note on my window saying ‘it’s not our trash thanks’ accompanied by the trash back on top of my bin.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. There are four units in total on the 3rd floor of my building, which means that the people who wrote the note knew to put it on my door because they knew they were trashing my bin. They would have no idea which other unit could’ve put the note there, since there are two other units which could’ve wrote it.
So I put the trash BACK in their bin. Now, I’m waiting for the response.”
How Could She Be So Stupid?
“I am a violinist and I book musicians for a trance music orchestra. Less than two weeks before a huge gig, one of the violinists emailed me saying she was ‘so sorry to do this,’ but ‘due to an unforeseen family situation’ she couldn’t do the gig. She made no effort to find a replacement and left me scrabbling around for a good violinist on one of the busiest Saturdays of the year. Obviously, I was irritated but I decided to just to leave it. I didn’t want to make any enemies.
Fast-forward to the day after the gig: I’m scrolling through Facebook and come across a post by this violinist about the great Saturday night she’d had out with her mates.
I was tempted to respond with some catty comment, but I decided instead to message all the fixers I know to make them aware of her unprofessionalism (turns out, a lot of them already avoid booking her). However, what baffles me most is her pure, unadulterated stupidity, especially when making it in this industry revolves largely around being reliable.”
You Probably Shouldn’t Show Up To The Place You Called In Sick To
“I used to work at a fancy chocolate/dessert place, and we were catering some event at an art gallery on a Friday night. I wasn’t scheduled to work, but one of the women that was supposed to work called in sick, so I volunteered to fill in.
About an hour in to the event, the woman showed up with a date. Not only did she not avoid me, she and her date approached my table and told me that I wasn’t dressed well enough for the gallery and that I was making our company look bad.
I didn’t confront her about calling in sick, but I did tell my boss what happened. That employee got fired.”
An Unnecessary Lie
“When I was 45 and my boyfriend was 54, we did not live together. We rarely spent the night together due to my pre-teen kids. I just don’t roll that way as far as what I consider to be a role model. To each their own.
Anyway, he was driving home from visiting his 85-year-old mother five hours away. He called me at 7 (just before I turn in for the night since I worked at 5:30 am) to say he was 90 miles away.
I said, ‘Really? It sounds just like you’re at home,’ due to the echo in the background.
‘Nope, I’m in XYZ city.’
‘K,’ I said, ‘I’m going to bed now.’
Nothing sat well with me. I could not sleep. I spent about 20 minutes thinking I was crazy to think he’d actually CALL ME to lie to me that he was still 90 miles away. I mean, because I had no intention nor mentioned any intention whatsoever to get together upon his return. He freaking called ME. It’s not like I called him hounding him when he was going to be back. I didn’t even want to see him that night.
But….it bothered the heck out of me that he’d LIE about something so simple. So stupid.
So I did what any normal, crazy woman would do, I got in my car and I drove the five miles to his house just to drive by and see if he was in, fact, home.
Sure as heck he was.
I knocked on the door. He answered the door saying he just got home.
Oh, really? IN WHAT? A ROCKET?
All he could do was tell me to search his home for another woman, that he just was alone and didn’t want to be bothered.
Whelp, why did YOU call ME to tell me you’re 90 miles away when you were actually home when all I told you was how I was going to bed and see you tomorrow?
Why LIE like that?
Ya know why? Because he’s a freaking liar. SEE YA.”