Catfish Season 3 episode 4 recap: Lucille and Kidd Cole

Last night’s episode of MTV’s Catfish was unlike any other. It starts with an interesting tale from Lucille in Philadelphia about her interactions with an aspiring artist from the D.C. area named Kidd Cole.

Lucille says that she met Kidd online and contacted him through Twitter when she direct messaged him her number as a fan. However, this Catfish story isn’t going to turn into the usual episode about a romantic relationship. It tells the nightmare that Lucille went through as she was trying to build a new career with the help of Kidd Cole.

catfish kidd cole lucille

 

After Lucille contacted Kidd and gave him her number, she was connected with his manager, Miguel. He sent her messages saying that Kidd wanted Lucille to come to his huge party with a celebrity guest list that one could only imagine. Since Kidd was signed with Kanye West’s crew, it only seemed fit to have this lavish party with A-List celebrities. Miguel then told Lucille that she would be able to get a job paying $70,000 a year through the record company, helping Kidd with planning appearances, making transportation accommodations, and hiring the best of security for him. The only odd thing about this was that it was at Lucille’s expense. She later found out through the invoices sent to her that all the people she was hiring were not going to get paid because Kidd’s people weren’t going to pay Lucille any of the money she just spent.

Now this makes Lucille look like the true scammer because she is the one responsible for making these accommodations and she can’t pay them back. When Lucille realizes this, she tries contacting Miguel and never gets a reply.

When Nev and Max come to help Lucille with her difficult situation, she tells them that she can’t have him arrested because the police told her he hasn’t done anything illegal. She would have to take him to court since this would be a civil case, but she doesn’t have the time or money for that. She also reveals to the guys that Kidd tried contacting her earlier that month asking for her help with planning an event. He tells her that he has a press conference with CNN and needs to have a valid credit card on records, so he asks her for her credit card information, since his was declined. Nev and Max go on to investigate this story further with a little help from MTV.

The guys notice that Kidd Cole has a page on MTV’s artists page and thinks it’s a reliable source. They call their friend Allison, who is MTV’s music supervisor in order to gain some more access into the case. They tell her what’s going on and ask how easy it would be to have a page on MTV’s artists page. She says it’s very easy, since anyone can make a band page with just a few clicks. Knocking down the only reliable lead they had, they ask her if she’s ever heard of Kidd Cole. She says no. They then tell her that he claims to be a part of G.O.O.D. Music with Kanye West and she helps the guys out by saying she’ll ask her friends over at G.O.O.D. to see if they know of Kidd Cole.

While waiting to hear back from Allison, the guys Google Kidd Cole and find mainly pictures. They go onto Kidd’s SoundCloud next and listen to a song featuring Kidd. Max turns on his SoundHound app that will let him know who the artist of the song is and they find out that the true artist is named Little Martin. Once they type this name into iTunes, they realize that Kidd is definitely not the artist since there is no mention of his name anywhere — yet the album does exist under the title Gary Coleman. Since they can’t find too much else — other than Kidd being a big fat liar — they Google the numbers they have for Kidd and his manager Miguel. Both come back registered to a Stone-Col Jerez located in Washington, D.C. Kidd’s real name is Jerez Coleman and he works throughout the D.C. area, so they conclude that Kidd and Miguel might be same person.

Max and Nev then decide to just Google the name Jerez Coleman and the first thing that pops up is a Facebook page dedicated to “Kidd Cole Scam Artist.” On the page, it is explained that a lady named Loretta who owns a limo service was recently scammed out of thousands of dollars after Kidd Cole never paid her for her services. The company is in the D.C. area, just like all the other places that Kidd seems to be connected with. Max and Nev decide to message Loretta in hopes of meeting with her because she seems to be the only person that has actually seen Kidd Cole in person. She messages them back the next morning saying she’d love to tell them her story. So the guys and Lucille head out to D.C. to find Kidd Cole.

On their way to D.C., Allison from MTV calls back to let the guys know that no one at G.O.O.D. Music has ever heard of Kidd Cole. They later meet up with Loretta to hear her story to try and make sense out of all of this. She explains to them that she was contacted by a New York number asking if her company would be able to drive Kidd Cole, who is a popular new artist associated with Kanye West. Loretta said that her company agreed and they decided to look Kidd Cole up on Google. She said that they thought he was really famous because he had appearances with Kanye West and Jaden Smith.

The weirdness started happening when Kidd came to be picked up for the first time to be taken out to dinner. Turns out that he didn’t have enough money to cover the bill — and the next day Loretta gets her answer as to why. Apparently Kidd had been robbed of his wallet and $800 the night before they went out, but it seems strange that Kidd wouldn’t just mention this to her right away. She also explains that he requested for her to take him to H&M and call to have all the security outside so he can shop inside in peace like he was a superstar. She ended up gaining his trust over time and was able to drop him off at his house where one day Loretta even met his grandma. Loretta says she was looking for Kidd to inquire about all the charges he wasn’t paying, and when his grandma came to the door, she said he wasn’t there but his mother was. However, the mother never came down to question Loretta about what her son was doing.

Kidd’s grandma hinted to Loretta that she believes they are actually homeless because they’ve been living with her for two months. After hearing this, Loretta put two and two together and knew she was being scammed. Her friend even found out that Jerez Coleman had a criminal record for fraud.

Back at the hotel, the guys and Lucille can only think of one option that will help them gain access to talking with Kidd, and that’s to call him. Nev does the honors and surprisingly Kidd answers the phone and after hearing why they called, he explains that this is the first time he’s hearing the news of Lucille being scammed. After trying to scramble for an answer or just something to say to Nev, he tells them that he’ll text them the next day with a time and place to meet up.

The next morning, they receive a text from Kidd saying where to meet up and when they arrive, it is the man that Lucille has been talking to. When questioned if he’s ever heard of the show Catfish, he’s once again clueless and doesn’t get the hint that everyone thinks he’s a fraud. When Max brings up the subject of his songs not really being his, Kidd’s answer is that his songs are all copyrighted and he can prove it. He isn’t really paying any attention to Lucille when she starts asking him questions, but does say that he isn’t Miguel. After staring at his phone forever rather than acknowledging the people right in front of him, Nev does something everyone watching probably hoped he’d do — he takes Kidd’s phone and throws it into the water. Of course this makes Kidd very angry and he doesn’t want to continue on with the interview that day, but says he’d like to show them proof of what he does the next day in the studio.

The following day, the gang heads out to the studio that Kidd is supposedly recording at. When they follow the note on the front door to go downstairs, they find Kidd and his friend Hadi who lives at this house-slash-recording studio. He says he’s the engineer at the studio and has worked with all of the artists that had their albums displayed on the walls.

Then Kidd decides to play them the latest song he’s recorded and Max uses SoundHound to see if it’s really his song — and again, it isn’t. But they keep this to themselves and Nev asks to drop some beats in the recording studio. When he’s in the booth, the two knuckleheads Kidd and Hadi can’t even figure out how to make the microphone work to record him. Hadi runs outside to his friend John to get some help, but he’s caught by Max. Hadi reveals that it isn’t really his house and he isn’t an engineer — he was just contacted by Kidd’s people to see if he knew any good recording studios. Max heads downstairs to reveal the news to everyone and Kidd is dumbfounded. He can’t believe that they would try and say this isn’t his work and when questioned again as to why he has been scamming people, he doesn’t really have an answer. Instead, he explains that when he was younger and asked by his social worker what he wanted to become, they laughed when he told them he wanted to be a musician and produce music. From then on he felt he had to prove a point to everyone that he can be the person he always dreamed of becoming.

Though they didn’t get the answer that Lucille wanted, the guys have a two-month check in with her and find out that some good news that came out of this horror story. Lucille changed her major to Criminal Justice after being involved in this debacle.

Kidd, however, hasn’t changed one bit. Lucille tells Nev and Max that he is now saying he was the co-producer of Beyoncé’s latest hit, “Drunk in Love.” To no one’s surprise, Kidd declined to have a follow-up meeting with the guys, but his website says he will be performing around the Los Angeles area this summer. He never paid back the thousands of dollars that he owed.

What were your thoughts on this episode? Did you think that Kidd Cole was an actual artist — or a total scammer, just like I thought? Would you have been willing to give out your credit card to help your favorite artist, who should already have plenty of money? Do you think Kidd should be prosecuted for never paying anyone back? Make sure to comment below.

New episodes of Catfish air Wednesdays at 10/9CT on MTV.

Photo: MTV

2 Comments

  1. Es un fraude ese tipo. Gueja con los sentimientos de los demas.. No deberia llamarse artista.. Deben de encerrarlo

  2. The guy’s a total scam artist..his mother might be in on it as well..remember – Loretta, the limousine driver advised that his mother wouldn’t even come down to greet her when she located where they were living? This dude’s got some deep-seated issues that he’s not handling where it all began and instead victimizing innocent people. Are the authorities going to jump on the bandwagon? He needs to be questioned at least.

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