
Transcript of You Can't Feed The Trolls BUT You Can HUNT Them
MrBallen PodcastToday's story is about a group of internet gamers who played together for years. But one day in their online world, the line between reality and fantasy suddenly blurred, and nobody could tell what was real and what was fake until it was too late. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. If that's of interest to you, please adjust the like buttons power seats in their car to a in a very uncomfortable position and then rip out the fuse. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. At 3: 30 PM on July 27, 2019, a 22-year-old college student named Nicole logged on to her gaming computer in her bedroom in North Carolina. Nicole had spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon studying, but now she could finally kick back and relax and play her favorite video game, an online player combat game called Perfect World, where people battled each other as characters inspired by Chinese mythology.
Perfect World was a pretty niche game, so not a whole lot of people played it or even knew about it, but Nicole loved it, and she played it basically every day for the past few years, was totally hooked on it. In playing it, she had met about a dozen other people from all over the world who also were obsessed with this game. Together, they had formed a virtual community, and they used a messaging app called Discord to communicate with each other outside of the game. On this particular day, after Nicole loaded up Perfect World, she also opened up her Discord chat, and she saw already that several of her friends were online, and they were all talking on the general chat inside of their server. Nicole began perusing the messages, and she saw the general theme of the messages being passed was about one of the other users on their server, somebody who went by the username, Menhas. As far as everyone knew on this Discord server, Menhas, they didn't know his real name, was a college student, and he was basically known to be a huge troll, which meant he said and did really offensive things, in particular on this Discord server, just to get people's reactions.
Because of his trolling behavior, he had actually been previously kicked out of the server and also kicked out of the game, Perfect World, like the game they're all connected on this Discord server through. He had been booted from both of those platforms in the past. But in previous occasions, when that happened, Menhaz would plead his case and say he's not going to do it anymore. He's he's going to behave, and eventually, the moderators would just let him back in. And so currently, Menhaz was back on the Discord server and he was back to his trolling ways. But as Nicole scanned through the general chat and went back and actually saw what Menhaz has been saying that day that basically had stirred up everybody else on the server to say, Look, he's back to his trolling ways. When she went back and actually saw what Menhaz was saying, Nicole couldn't help but feel like today's trolling just felt different. Menhaz was talking about this apparently brilliant four-step plan he had that was going to completely revolutionize his life and basically set him up for big success in his life going forward. However, this plan he was talking about, this four-step plan, was not only totally outrageous, but just seemed impossible.
What he was saying he was going to do just didn't seem possible even by Menhaz's standards. Within his trolling standards, this was a bridge too far. This isn't even trolling. This is just weird what you're proposing. Basically, the chatter on the Discord server this day that Nicole was seeing was how nobody believed this four-step plan was a real thing. This is just classic Menhaz trolling. Nicole, too, she also did not believe this plan was serious. She did not think for a second Menhaz was going to do this. She just rolled her eyes, ignored Menhaz, minimized the Discord server, and just enjoyed playing the game, Perfect World. After a while, after a couple of battles that she won and a couple of battles that she lost in this game, she paused for a second and noticed there was a whole bunch of new notifications on their Discord server. Because Nicole was already taking a break from the game, she opened up the Discord server to see what was going on. Right away, she saw the main topic of discussion was once again Menhaz and his four-step plan. But specifically, Menhaz had just sent a picture through the Discord server that apparently represented completing step one of this four-step plan.
He basically said, Look, I did it. I've done one. I'm on to step two now. Everybody's looking at this picture thinking, Wait a minute, he's actually doing this? This can't be real. Nicole, when she looked at this picture, she two thought like, No way, this is not possible. He did not do this. In fact, her first thought was, Okay, maybe this image was created by AI or something, or maybe he pulled this image off a website somewhere and is pretending it's authentic, but it can't possibly be something he actually took a picture of. He couldn't have done this. Pretty quickly, Nicole, despite seeing this image, she agreed with the consensus that Menhaz is still just trolling us. This picture is not proof that he's really doing this four-step plan. And so Nicole went back to playing Perfect World, and about an hour later, she noticed there were all sorts of new notifications on her Discord server. Once again, she stopped her game, she opened up the Discord server, and once again, the entire chat was dominated about Menhas because Menhas had sent a second picture, apparently representing him completing the second step of his big four-step plan.
And once again, everyone's saying, There's no way. He's trolling us. This can't be real. And Nicole, she looked at the image itself, and she too thought, This has got to be trolling. But now, she wasn't just filled with pure disbelief She wasn't able to just completely discard what was happening here because part of her was thinking, how is Menha getting these hyper-specific images that really are tethered to this exact plan he's laid out? How does he have these images? Where where they're coming from. Now, this was back in 2019, and certainly AI technology existed, but not the way it does now, where the average user can literally, in seconds, create hyper-specific images using AI. In 2019, that really wasn't available to those people. Really, the only way Menhaz could potentially have these images, at least in Nicole's mind, was he had to have pulled them off some website somewhere and basically pretended they were images that he took. Nicole decided she was actually going to take the two images he had sent and reverse image search them to try to figure out where they came from. Find the website, where he's pulling them from, because clearly, these pictures are not authentic.
There's no way Menhaz actually took these photos. But when Nicole reverse image searched both images, nothing came up. Now, Nicole thought, Okay, that does seem to suggest these are authentic pictures he really did take, which maybe means he's actually doing this plan, even though that seemed totally preposterous. Or she thought, Maybe these images have been pulled from such an obscure website somewhere that I don't have access to finding them in a reverse image search, that maybe that's what it is. At this point, Nicole told herself, You know what? There's got to be a reasonable explanation for this, but I'll tell you this, it It can't be that Menhans is actually following through on this plan. It's not possible. Once again, she minimized the Discord server and got back into the game. But pretty quickly, Nicole just stopped playing the game because her mind was totally fixated on whatever was going on with Menhas. She opened up the Discord server again, and she saw, still, everybody in the chat was talking about Menhas and these two pictures he had sent. Basically, the server was divided. About half the members believed this really was just Menhas trolling, and the other The staff was starting to think that, Hey, guys, this might be real.
He might actually be carrying out this four-step plan. Those pictures might be real. If that's the case, we have a huge problem because this plan, if he actually carries it out, is so completely illegal. He can't do this. This is not okay. The faction of members on the Discord server that were starting to sense that this four-step plan of Menha's might actually be real, began to talk internally, and they said, Look, we can't just sit here and do nothing if Menhaz is actually doing this. We have to stop him. This is not okay. In fact, one of these members actually contacted their local police and told them, Hey, there's this guy on my Discord server. His username is Menhaz. I don't have his actual name, but he's doing something that could be very bad and you need to look into it. The dispatcher said, Okay, well, where does Menhaz live? The person who had called was like, Well, I don't actually know. In fact, I really don't know much about him other than the fact that he goes by Menhaz and he sent these crazy pictures that could be real or not, I don't know.
Eventually, the dispatcher just said, Look, I get it that you're concerned, but we have nothing to go on here. Remember, this is the internet. People make stuff up all the time. Pretty quickly after that, the police officer just hung up, and that was that. Are you the type of person who has binged basically all of my YouTube videos, and every week, you anxiously wait a new upload? If so, thank you. But also you're in luck. Because if you didn't know this, we actually have a separate podcast, the Mr. Ballin podcast, that has literally hundreds of stories that are not on YouTube that you can binge right now. That podcast is available on all podcast platforms. Again, it's just called the Mr. Ballin podcast. And on Mondays on that podcast, we upload exclusive new content that is not on YouTube to the podcast. That's Mondays. And then on Thursday, we remaster the audio of your favorite videos on YouTube and put those on the podcast. But again, Mondays, those are brand new and exclusive to the podcast. But if you want to hear those exclusive episodes one month ahead of Apple and Spotify and all the other platforms, well, there's only one place you can do that, and that's on Amazon Music.
So again, you can go to any podcast platform and find the Mr. Ballen podcast, or if you're like me and you hate waiting, then you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. At this point, Nicole and the other members of the Discord server who were starting to suspect that what Minha was doing could be real, at this point, they felt really alone. I mean, the local police was not taking this seriously, which did make sense. I mean, they had nothing to go on. But as a result, it was like nobody was doing anything about what Menhaz was claiming. Nicole and the other members who, again, were beginning to sense this could be real, they felt terrible about just sitting here doing nothing. And so Nicole and a few other members of the Discord server decided to team up digitally and actually investigate Menhaz themselves, try to figure out who this guy is and really what's he up to. And so Nicole and this new investigative group started by combing through all the chat logs in their Discord server to see if Menhaz at any point had either intentionally or unintentionally dropped hints about his real name and his location.
And Actually, they came across a message where Menhaz actually said his real first name was Menhaz. That wasn't just his username, that was his real name. That was great because Menhaz was a pretty unique name. Nicole and the group thought, Okay, well, if we find where in the world, that name is somewhat common, maybe that will give us a rough idea of where to look for Menhaz in the world. They also knew that Menhaz was a college student, or at least he claimed to be. Now, he never actually said where he went to college, but he would often in the Discord server tell people when he was going to be on the server and when he was going to be off the server, like for classes and for studying and that thing. He would say, Okay, hey, I'll be on at 6: 00 PM tonight, or I'll be off at 9: 00, I'll be back on at 8: 00. He would give these specific times, and he would always use Eastern Standard Time when he did that. A natural assumption that Nicole and her group made was, okay, very likely, Menhas lives in the Eastern Time zone.
That time zone included the entire East Coast of the United United States, Eastern and Central Canada, and also some countries in South and Central America. But while that was helpful, it still created too broad of an area in the world for this group to realistically look for Menhas. It was nearly impossible to actually figure out where he was. But they now had a sense of where he could be, and they thought, Okay, well, why don't we ask somebody else in the Discord server if they can try to track Menhas's IP address? An IP address can be used to find the approximate geographical location of a computer. Sure enough, someone in the server said they could do that, and within a few minutes, they had tracked Menhaz's computer to Toronto, Canada. However, right at the same time they were figuring this out, Menhaz sent a third picture across the Discord server, a picture that showcased him completing step three of this four-step plan, allegedly. For Nicole and many other members of this Discord server, this third picture really represented a big shift because now it was getting terrifying. Because look, it seems pretty likely at this point that Menhaz is actually doing this.
This is real. How could he possibly have these hyper-specific photos that are perfectly synced with this four-step plan he had come up with? This feels real. Nicole, she actually asked the person who had traced his IP address to Toronto. She said, Hey, should we call the Toronto police and tell them what's going on here? Maybe they can go find him and stop him before he completes this plan. I mean, he's apparently completed three steps. There's only one step left. We have to stop him here. But the person who had tracked his IP address to Toronto said, Look, what are the police going to do? There's 6 million people that live in Toronto, and all we have is that maybe his computer is in Toronto, and maybe these pictures are real. Also, by the way, it's pretty easy to mask your IP address. You can use something called a VPN or virtual private network that when you track someone's IP address that has one of those working, it will make it seem like their address is, for example, in Toronto or Chicago or New York or Dallas or anywhere in the world, when in reality, their computer is somewhere totally different.
And so the police are not going to launch a manhunt based on an IP address. It's not 100% accurate. Basically, Nicole realized that even though they saw they are on the precipice, potentially, of Menha's committing some horrible crime, and they can't do anything about it because they don't really have any information about Menha's. At this point, everybody on the Discord server was basically begging Menha's to come clean, tell us these photos are fake, tell us this plan of yours is really just you trolling. But Menha's didn't do that. He doubled down and said, Oh, no, these are all real. In fact, I'm going to complete step four of this plan and complete the whole process in 30 minutes. After that, all Nicole and the other members of the Discord server could do was just try to convince Menhaz not to do this. Don't follow through with this. Don't You got to complete the plan. You got to stop. It's not worth it. But Menhaz refused and said, I'm doing this no matter what. Sure enough, 30 minutes later, Menhaz would send one final picture, the fourth picture, showcasing that his four-step plan was now complete.
At this point, someone from the Discord server did call the Toronto police. The following day, at about 3: 30 PM, police officers arrived outside of Menhaz's home, which it would turn out was located in a small town just north of Toronto. The IP address had been correct. By this point, it had now been about 24 hours since Menhaz had sent the very first picture of his four-step plan. Police knocked on the front door, having no idea what to expect here. They had seen the images Menhaz had sent on the Discord server, but at this point, until they went inside, they had no idea if they were dealing with a terrible crime or a terrible joke. When the door opened, Menhaz himself was standing in the doorway. He had a totally neutral, very calm expression on his face. He was very gracious. He welcomed the police inside. When they stepped inside, they asked him, What's going on here? All Menhaz said was, You'll see. So the police walked further into the home and eventually made their way upstairs. When they got When they got there, they just froze. Because it would turn out, Menhaz was not trolling.
Those pictures were not fake. He really had carried out that four-step plan. It would turn out for the past four years, Menhaz had been living a double life. To his friends and family, When in reality, he was a college student studying engineering, and he was on a path to great success. When in reality, he dropped out of college in his first year and just pretended to go to school every day, when in reality, he would just go to a local mall and hang out there, and then in the evenings when school was over and he would come back home, he would just immerse himself in video games, specifically that perfect world game. That's what he did. He just went to the mall and played video games and lied to his friends and family. But July 27th, 2019, the day that Menhaz put his four-step plan into action was literally the last day he could maintain this ruse, because the next day, July 28th, 2019, was the day Menhaz was scheduled to graduate from his college. And so his friends and family were all expecting to be there and to see this amazing ceremony. To deal with the fact that his real life and his fake life were about to collide, Menhaz came up with his four-step plan.
He literally told the members of the Discord server about his big plan, but nobody believed him because he was always trolling people. It just seemed like, Oh, this is made up another one of Menhaz's lies. But he was not lying. It was all true. Those pictures that he sent across were absolutely authentic. He took those pictures, and they did represent completing each step in the plan. The first picture was of his mother, the second picture was of his grandmother, the third picture was of his sister, and the fourth picture was of his father. And in each picture, those people were dead because Menhaz had spent the day methodically killing his entire family to prevent them finding out about his lie. He hit them over the head with a crowbar and then slit their throats and took a picture, posted it to Discord. By the time someone from Discord finally got in touch with the Toronto police, it was too late. Menhaz had obliterated his entire family. Menhaz ultimately pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Thank you so much for watching.
Let me know in the comments what you thought of today's episode. Also, remember, we have hundreds more videos for you to binge right now. But if you want a recommendation of which video to invest your time in, well, here are two great options right here. If you want more Mr. Balin content, click on this one. If you want some redacted Declassified mysteries with Luc LaMana, click over here. All right, until next time. See you.
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