Derek Alldred: The cunning but charming conman who duped 27 women out of over $2 million

Derek Alldred is not a name most will be familiar with, but for the 27 women whom he first charmed before often conning them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's a name they will forever want to forget.

A serial conman and a master manipulator, he knew his way around women and could often effortlessly seduce them. Alldred's modus operandi was to target middle-aged lonely women and coax them into a false sense of security by painting himself as a qualified and committed man whom they could see marrying but before that he would be stealing their social security numbers, taking lines of credits in their names, and racking bills in the tens and hundreds of thousands. What he left in his wake were broken victims who were left with little choice but to pick up the pieces of their lives and who could do nothing but hope the authorities apprehended him before he got to another. 

What was begrudgingly impressive was that he would be conning multiple women — most of who were highly qualified and successful themselves — at the same time via his numerous identities, though it would be this same arrogance that would ultimately be his undoing. Those same women that he duped would band together to research his devious past and slowly put together the pieces of the puzzle to take him down as he continued his spree across various states in the country and got increasingly more careless. Their diligence would finally see him put behind bars, possibly until he's old and frail.

Alldred's story will be the subject of Oxygen documentary 'Seduced By Evil,' which will feature interviews with several of the women who speak out about the emotional devastation and financial ruin he left in his wake, and how they bonded over their collective hate for him to orchestrate a master plan to trap him. It will premiere on Oxygen on February 9 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Alldred had been a conman for most of his adult life. He started out with a habit of dressing up as a firefighter and going to hospitals to get drugs for cheap. He would then sell the same drugs on the black market for a hefty profit. He was caught purely by coincidence after a fire chief noticed him in a department store camera posing as a firefighter with a fake badge. He ended up serving 15 months in prison for the crime, and his name was on the records. But that didn't stop him from continuing to do what he knew best: swindle.

It helped that he was naturally charismatic. In police interviews, he would unfailingly maintain a calm demeanor, deflecting questions like a seasoned pro and smooth talking his way out of what would have otherwise been an incredibly sticky situation. His victims and officials say, if he put his mind to it, he could have been anything he wanted to be. But what he wanted to be was a conman, and he decided his target would be, more often than not, middle-aged women who were divorced or going through divorces. Easy, vulnerable targets. Or so he thought.

In September 2013, he met Cindi Pardini, a tech professional, in San Fransisco. Alldred presented himself as a wealthy investor who was worth over $35 million and immediately began his charm offensive on her, just as he did with all his victims. He took her on expensive dates to five-star restaurants, treated her to the finest wine, and for New Year's, even rented out a yacht. But just as it was with the other women, the relationship would always reach a point where things would become untenable. Whether this was because of his propensity to go missing for weeks at a time — when he would be working to con another victim — or it was his myriad of excuses as he juggled his multiple lives, the fallout was inevitable, and quite possibly, planned.

This would also usually coincide with his victim uncovering his real identity. For Cindi, this was when Alldred treated her at the Ritz Carlton in October 2013. After he left her in a room claiming he had a big meeting to attend, Cindi opened up his Macbook to find a fake credit card he had made under her name and on which he had racked over $70,000 in expenses. When she confronted him, he knocked her out and made his escape.

That would be the last she saw of him for the next five years, but not the last she thought of him. She spent that half-a-decade obsessing about bringing him to justice, in the process, becoming a de facto leader for the other women he would go on to dupe. She collected every news article she could find on him and tracked his movements to the best of her capabilities, keep detectives updated about him anytime she could. She even hired a private detective to look into him, admitting to the Atlantic she was "not in a good place" after he had drained her bank accounts and ruined her credit score and that he had "taken over my life." But her persistence would prove to be a godsend in the long run.

In November 2013, one month after Cindi, Alldred had already moved on to Dr. Kimberly Haycraft Williams, who had her own medical practice and who had been going through a long extensive divorce at the time. Presenting himself as the owner of a financial firm, Alldred quickly had Kimberly falling head-over-heels for him, convincing her to get married to him by Christmas. His financial background also saw her entrust her business's finances with him. It was all going peachy and six months into their relationship, despite the suspicions of her father, she agreed to go on vacation with him to Puerto Rico. It was here that the realization that something was off with him began dawning on her. 

Having reached the island, Alldred informed her everything of theirs had been stolen, including her driver's license. She was stranded with a man who was quite possibly very dangerous, and who she later found had tampered with her phone to ensure no calls made their way to her. It was a ploy to siphon all the money out of her practice, but she would only uncover the con two weeks later when he miraculously found her belongings, and they made their way back home. And it was too late by then. Her bank account had been cleaned out, and there was a $137,000 debt on her business which forced her into declaring bankruptcy.

Alldred was caught by the authorities in June 2014 after he slipped up and forgot to pay off a $2,000 bill at a hotel. But detectives okayed his release as they wanted to charge him with more serious crimes, and to no one' surprise, he made a run for it. He was apprehended in November that year but because they couldn't charge him for the credit card fraud, they got him on theft by swindle. He escaped with a 15-month sentence.

And like any sociopath who couldn't help himself, he continued to plan to target helpless women while in prison. Following his release, he would go on to swindle Missi Brandt, Linda Dyas, Kimberly Nelson, Dorie Watkins, Tracie Cooper-Cunningham, JoAnn Venhuizen, and several more. By May 2017, it was estimated he had stolen $1.8 million from 25 different women in eight different states.

However, he also started becoming sloppier and sloppier, trying to maintain relationships with multiple women at the same time. Unbeknownst to him, Cindi had been contacting all of his victims, and they were working together to put an end to his conning days. And when he had posed to women as a military officer — a federal offense — they had, without his knowledge and innocently enough, taken pictures. The proverbial nail in the coffin came when he left behind his iPad at one of his victims' homes, giving them an opportunity to go to the police with sufficient evidence that could later be used in any trial.

A major operation in Fort Worth saw him apprehended as he faked an operation at the Texas Health Harris Heart Center in June 2017. At the time of his arrest, it was determined he had conned 27 women out of $2.1 million. But a question remained for his victims: will he actually face consequences this time around, or will he once again weasel his way out? He had been charged with a variety of offenses ranging from identity theft to felony possession of a firearm. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) wanted him on stolen valor.

A few days before Christmas that year, Alldred pleaded guilty to two counts of identity theft and one count of mail fraud, charges with a maximum combined penalty of 24 years in prison. Would the judge impose the maximum penalty? More than 10 of his victims turned up at the Paul Brown Federal Courthouse on August 22, 2018, this past year for his sentencing hearing, and Alldred had one last trick up his sleeve: an apology. But the women did not buy it and neither did the judge. He was ordered to serve the full 24 years behind bars.

Speaking after the hearing, U.S. attorney Joseph D. Brown said, "This defendant left a trail of tears, emotional devastation, and financial ruin behind him. It is clear that he will never change, and we expect his sentence to reflect that."