Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfisher, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them
In 2011 three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last-minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn’t after money—he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy.
After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame’s stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception than they could have ever imagined. As Anna Akbari and the women untangled their catfish’s web, they found other victims and realized that without a proper crime, there was no legal reason for “Ethan” to ever stop.
There is No Ethan catalogues Akbari’s experience as both victim and observer. By looking at the bigger picture—a world where technology mediates our relationships; where words and images are easily manipulated; and where truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms—Akbari provides an explanation for why these stories matter.
There Is No Ethan is one of the most fascinating and bizarre true crime stories I’ve ever read… especially because, in point of fact, no actual crime (by legal definitions) ever took place. And yet, the violation of ethical standards and the emotional manipulation perpetrated by “Ethan” are truly shocking.
In this memoir, the author recounts her involvement with Ethan Schuman in the early 2010s. She met Ethan on OKCupid, and they formed an instant rapport. Technology was not quite at the stage of FaceTime and Zoom, so communication via chat threads and emails was pretty par for the course. Anna and Ethan began an intense relationship via digital platforms, sharing detailed thoughts, emotions, and vulnerabilities, both ostensibly equally excited to meet in real life — something delayed repeatedly due to Ethan’s high pressure job. When Ethan cancelled again and again each time they had plans, his excuses escalated to a cancer diagnosis and surgery — and how could Anna be so cruel as to hold that against him? But eventually, the red flags indicating manipulation and emotional abuse were too much to ignore, and Anna walked away.
Soon after, she was contacted by another woman through a mutual acquaintance, someone who has a disturbingly similar tale to tell. And before long, the two of them were able to find yet a third woman who’d been involved with Ethan for over two years. For all three, the patterns were starkly similar: Intense, non-stop messaging, elaborate personal stories, harsh criticisms should they step out of line, and excuse after excuse for never actually meeting.
There Is No Ethan lays out the chronology of these women’s experiences with Ethan in a factual, organized manner, with extensive excerpts from the messages and emails exchanged over the course of their individual relationships with Ethan. As outsiders, we readers may ask how no one became suspicious earlier, but from reading the correspondence, it’s clear that Ethan was a master manipulator, having absolutely no shame when it came to concocting excuses and alibis, even going to far as to create a fake sister to vouch for him when one of the women showed signs of stepping out of line.
And yet… Ethan was never held accountable for his actions beyond having his name and true identity outed. Why? Because as far as the author is able to demonstrate, he committed no crimes. He never extorted money from his victims; there’s no identity theft, financial scam, or sexual coercion involved. But — what he did was clearly, absolutely, cruel and wrong.
SPOILER AHEAD: You can easily find out Ethan’s true identity through a Google search, but if you don’t want to know, this is the time to stop reading this review!
As the book title makes clear, there is no Ethan. Ethan Schuman does not exist. The profile pictures and other photos he provided to his various victims were all photos he took from an old acquaintance’s social media accounts. No Ethan Schuman attended the colleges or graduate schools he claimed to have attended, nor worked for Morgan Stanley or the US government as he claimed.
In fact, Ethan Schuman isn’t even a man. As the author and the women she befriends discover, the person behind the Ethan persona is a woman named Emily Slutsky. At the time of their involvement with Emily, she was a medical student — and is now a practicing physician.
Confronted with her lies, deceit, and cruelties, Emily’s responses to the woman range from anger to justification to claims of carrying out a fiction in order to try on other lives. She remains remarkably indifferent to the harm she caused, and despite vowing to stop, continued to engage with other women under the Ethan persona for years to come.
No consequences ever seemed to have caught up with Emily. While the trio of woman contacted Emily’s family, her medical school, and later employers, nothing happened. The author is adamant that the ethical breach embodied by Emily’s manipulations should disqualify her from holding positions of trust with vulnerable patients — but if you Google Emily, you’ll see that she continues to practice as an ob/gyn.
The author, a sociologist, explores issues around identity in a digital age, which is all quite fascinating. Still, the real hook of this compelling non-fiction tale is the detailed way in which Ethan/Emily’s lies and manipulation are spelled out. Emily’s victims are all highly educated professional women, who, perhaps due to the ongoing challenge of forging real connections in the age of online dating, made themselves vulnerable to a man who seemed to prize intellectual and emotional vulnerability over anything else. It’s easy to see how they’d be sucked in, especially given Emily’s relentless stream of messaging, leaving them more sleep-deprived and wrecked emotionally with each passing day.
More than a decade has passed since the author’s involvement with Ethan, and technology has evolved enough since then that a broken webcam or unwillingness to have a live conversation would not be accepted as valid excuses in the way it was then. Still, There Is No Ethan is certainly a cautionary tale about the unimaginable ways someone with shady morals and a lot of creativity can take advantage, even of someone who thinks they’re alert to all the warning signs and have taken all necessary precautions.
There Is No Ethan is fascinating, horrifying, and utterly absorbing. It also left me rather furious — as far as I can tell, Ethan/Emily has yet to face any real consequences for her actions. Highly recommended.
Bookshelf Fantasies 