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As a regular from the Classic Toy Trains forum, I think that the reason so many of us were duped by Zeke, myself included (although I didn't send him anything), was that long before the tale of woe delivered by "Jenny", he was a frequent and very enthusiastic contributer to the forum.  He first came on asking for advice about a Lionel engine he purchased at a garage sale that needed repair work done to it. This was perfectly acceptable and everyone was happy to help out this person on their start in the O gauge three-rail hobby.  As time went on, he was asking questions about how to properly go about building the O gauge layout he was starting.  In no time at all, he was basically "one of the guys" at the CTT forum.  He even started a topic encouraging everyone to post pictures of themselves, in which he included his own pictures (although who they were actually of is anyone's guess).  All of this combined made most of us believe that this guy was legit.  My first impression of him was that he certainly wasn't very smart, but there are no I.Q. tests that need to be passed to qualify as a member of the model train hobby and he seemed to make up for his intelligence with enthusiasm.He was actively posting for a couple months and well-established in the forum community before "Jenny" ever came onto the scene.  I'm sure that if he had joined the forum and only a couple of weeks later posted Jenny's saga, none of us would have believed him.One post of his that is interesting to look back on now is one in which he told the story of meeting an elderly gentleman who had a large train collection and out of kindness gave him a Lionel ZW transformer, a Lionel Lackawanna 4-8-4 and some track (all of which ended up on ebay).  In this story, he mentioned his politeness with the man and his wife (calling them "sir" and "ma'am") and of the bond that formed between the two because of them both being veterans.  Certainly if a simmilar experience happened to me, I wouldn't tell it with such self-effacing frankness.  Unfortunately, I assumed that he was simply naiive and didn't have the tact or brains for modesty.  Not long after, Zeke posted that the elderly gentleman died without mentioning anything about a funeral or the fate of his trains.  I thought this rather odd at the time, but really didn't give it any more thought.My theory is that he probably just wanted attention.  This certainly explains his extreme keenness before all of this.  Simply posting on the forum got him some attention, telling his heartwarming story about the old man giving him trains got him more attention and having a heart attack and brain tumor got him a lot of attention.  It also got him some trains, which he may or may not have planned on, but certainlly didn't mind I'm sure.  Actually, if he really is a fifteen-year-old who needs to pull a stunt like this in order to get attention, I can't help but feel sorrry for him.It will be interesting to see if he actually ends up sending back the trains he got...
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