Most college seniors are plagued with worrying about their finals, having to study, and figuring out what comes next post graduation.
Lexie had a slightly different experience in her final year of college, like getting pulled out of class to meet with the FBI and being asked to go undercover for a sting operation. As far as college stories go, this one is pretty hard to top!
Lexie, who goes by @lexieb93 on TikTok, had the FBI reach out to her to help them set up a sting operation back when she was in college and the president of her SEC sorority.
It was 2016, Lexie was a college senior, and she was in class one day when the Gainesville Police Department called her. Lexie knew something had to be wrong for the authorities to be phoning her up like that, and her mind raced to what it could be.
Had one of the sorority girls gotten arrested, and Lexie needed to bail a fellow female out? Anyway, Lexie picked up, despite being in class, and the officer on the other end of the line asked her to come down to the station immediately.
The officer said everything was totally fine and they would tell her more in person, even though Lexie was panicking. She ended up heading over to see the police after class, and she was led into a room with an officer and an FBI agent.
“He essentially explains to me that someone (or a group of people), has been targeting and exploiting women, specifically sorority women, getting things like their [private photos], hacking into their bank accounts, their Spotify accounts, all sorts of accounts,” Lexie said in her video.
“I don’t know that we, or they, fully understood, or…maybe…I wasn’t briefed on this, on what the intent was, like if it was a financial thing, I don’t know why.”
“Basically, they asked me if I would be willing to work with them undercover in a sting operation to trap this person or this network of people doing this.”
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
Lexie was floored, but said yes. The authorities had reached out to other sorority presidents in the area for their help as well, which Lexie confirmed was true through speaking to these other girls.
Lexie said the whole thing was something out of a dream, and this was back in the day, before Snapchat filters could make you look like a whole new person, so the authorities had to rely on Photoshop to develop their decoy girl.
Lexie and another trusted girl in her sorority gave the authorities photos of themselves, and the authorities basically smushed them together to make a new, fake girl.
The plan was then to lure in the scammer with the fake girl. So Lexie and her friend had headshots taken of them at the sorority, and the FBI made a girl out of those images.
Lexie joked that if she and her friend ever had a daughter together, she would have been gorgeous based on that fake one they helped bring to life.
The FBI agent offered to buy Lexie and her friends iPhones because they were helping for free, and that was an item they could expense, but Lexie declined since she had one already.
Eventually, Lexie and her friend just stopped speaking to the FBI agent, and she’s not sure if the sting operation ever worked out or not.
She didn’t get a case number or a way to follow up, so it’s anyone’s guess.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
