There are a few extremely satisfying things in this world: Popping bubble wrap, cracking open an egg perfectly, the sound of leaves crunching, peeling the plastic off of a new phone, catching someone in a lie. The sweet satisfaction of catching someone in a lie–especially an elaborate one—is a feeling unlike anything else. You get a huge sense of relief when you figure out the truth and you get sweet, sweet justice when you finally expose the liar. It's like winning the lottery. Haven't felt that before? These people have, and they can tell you exactly what the moment is like.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Mr. World Wide
A co-worker was a military retiree who claimed to have been everywhere. Someone might say, "I spent a week in Cambodia..." He'd say, "Yeah, I was there once. Stopped over on my way to Thailand." We figured he was BS-ing most if not all the time, so we started inventing places. "My cousin is traveling in Argentina, and he's at this mountain village called Burritosalsa...."
HIM: "Oh, yeah. We did a joint military exercise with Argentina back in the 80s and stopped off there."
US: "Did you visit the temple on Blueberry Hill?"
HIM: "Heck, yeah! Everyone in my outfit visited!"
#2 Card Games
Someone put down two sevens, but I had all four of them.
#3 Caught Red Handed
When I lived with my Dad I had a cash bank that I kept hidden. I was positive about the sum of money I had saved up (I was saving up for the Xbox 360 which was coming out) and when I counted it, it was short. Like $20 short. I also had a webcam on my computer and since my family was not computer literate I set it up on a timelapse, one picture every 10 seconds, whenever I left the house. Sure enough, the suspected family member went into my room, went right for the stash and stole from me. I confronted them at dinner in front of everyone, they denied it, others believed them, and then I put the photo I printed out on the table.
#4 Catching On
The best times are when you've got other people standing off to the side so you can give them a little glance to see if they've caught on to the BS.
#5 Hotel Liar
A guest lied to me that he paid for two nights and wouldn’t leave the room. He made me go through this giant ordeal of calling all the front desk employees and double-checking all their work. He threw a huge fit calling me names, he jets out of the parking lot and the police I called pull him over and take him in. Coworkers and I still play it on the camera and laugh about it.
#6 Halloween Candy
I caught my mom eating my Halloween candy when I was little after she told me it wasn't her. Getting new candy from the store because of it was pretty satisfying.
#7 Angry Boss
I had a boss who kept on getting angry at me because "I wasn't doing what he told me to do." Finally one day, I decided to start writing down exactly what he told me, dated it, and kept a record of it. Then one day came where inevitably, "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?!" To which I replied, "Exactly what you told me to do."
"I NEVER TOLD YOU TO DO THAT!"
"Well, I have it written here..." pulls out notecard "On 5/22/16, you told me specifically to do this task, exactly like this, and never do it any other way."
I finally won. I started standing up for myself a bit more in the office, and I was respected for it.
#8 Plagiarized Essay
Wasn't me, but a professor caught a student plagiarizing an essay... as she was reading it aloud to the class. "That's an excellent essay by my friend, Dr. X you're reading. Please keep reading it until the end." He made her stand in front of us and kept going until "her presentation" was over.
#9 Nit Picker
Before desktop publishing, I was in my 20s, an ad designer for a local department store. The boss was out, and a co-worker (who had been there many years, and was jaded and grumpy all the time) was put in charge for the day. I brought an ad to her for approval, and she found some nit-picky thing that she wanted adjusting.
I knew that it was just bullshit on her part, so she could feel powerful. I took the ad back to my desk, worked on something else for a while, then brought it back absolutely unchanged. She looked at it and said "Oh, that looks much better!" and approved it.
I never let on that it was the exactly same version she'd rejected earlier.
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#10 Fake Pregnancy
When his ex-girlfriend sent me a picture of a pregnancy test... but couldn’t hold it up to a daily newspaper. She broke and admitted it was fake.
#11 Little Liar
I was 16 and was seeing a girl who I had some doubts about. She would make up the most insignificant lies about stupid things but it wasn't malicious so I let it slide until things escalated. Her dad had a friend (John) who had cancer. We went to visit him 200 miles away and he looked really bad, she acted like she didn't give a hoot. About two weeks later we were at a party and she started crying about how John had died and she was absolutely devastated so I comforted her.
About a week after that I went to dinner at her parents and her dad said, "I just got off of the phone with John and they're saying he's reacting well with the chemo." Her face dropped, and she couldn't look me in the eye, but I knew I had her, so I finished my dinner and went home. I phoned her later and told her not to call me ever again or I'll tell her dad about her lie. She didn't call again. I still don't know what happened to poor John.
#12 I'm Sick I Swear
This employee I used to manage called off and I knew he was BS-ing. Said he was sick as heck until I showed him and the GM his Facebook had checked him into about six different bars during a bloc party... at the time he was supposed to be working.
#13 Expensive Parker
I travel for work. I 90 percent of the time park in economy at the airport (I think $14 per day). about a 10 to 15 min walk. A few times out of necessity to catch a flight I park in the garage (I think $24 per day, five minute walk). Usually two to three-day trips, not a huge expense. My boss suggests I park in Off-Site Shuttle parking (about $11 a day, but a pain in the butt as you need a bunch more time to plan for the shuttle). He said he does it because it is cheaper for the company (which he owns).
One day while walking through the garage from on-site economy, there in the reserved parking (closest and like $40 per day) is my boss's truck. And reserved takes planning, he wasn't just running late and needed to park in the garage to make a flight. I just put my business card under his wiper. I never brought it up, and I haven't heard any complaints about parking on my expense reports since.
#14 Kids Think They're Slick
“Did you brush your teeth before getting into bed?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Then why is your toothbrush still dry?”
“Duh...I-I-I...”
[mock imitating]”’Duh I-I-I didn’t brush my teeth Dad.’ Get back in there and brush your teeth.”
Kids think they’re slick, but they forget the little details to cover their tracks.
#15 Doll Stealer
I must have been nine or 10. My friends and I were all going through the same doll phase, so we would bring our favorites to each other's house and play. As my friend was leaving I noticed a few of my dolls missing. She was holding them hostage in her doll limo, I just knew it. As she was walking outside I casually said, "Oh I think you might have grabbed my doll on accident." Flustered she checked her limo and pulled out my dolls.
Got you. She also stole some of my doll's clothing. I searched her room when she went to the bathroom and stole it back. Stopped playing dolls with her!
#16 Work Boyfriend
Some chick said she was getting with this guy they were interning with during their lunch breaks. That guy was my boyfriend and I regularly came down to eat lunch with him.
#17 Copyright
At work one day a co-worker started telling me and another co-worker a story about being stopped by the police.
He went into great detail about how he stopped at a gas station for a drink and there were two cops standing out front and nobody else in the parking lot. He gave the cops a wave, being nice, bought his drink, and left. Less than a hundred feet down the street these same two cops pulled him over. They told him that they smelled grass when he got out of the car. He asked the cops if they could smell it now, standing next to his open window, they said no but it was obvious it came from him. They asked if they could search his car, which he angrily let them, telling them he wanted the cops to climb through his hot car to find nothing. While one cop did the "Search" the other cop told him to calm down, he looked nervous. To which he said "I'm not upset, I'm angry. You didn't smell grass, you smelled a shaved head and tattoos." The cops found nothing and let him go about his business.
THE LIE: It was MY story. It happened to ME months before and I told that story at work back then. He even quoted me, except I said "Long hair and tattoos". A few minutes into the story my other co-worker and I start giving each other the side-eye, realizing he was literally telling me my own story. I think he realized it towards the end because he quickly finished up the story and left without ever mentioning it again.
#18 Card Game Win
Playing BS I made someone take half the deck when they said “two eights” and put down three cards. I hope you are reading this Kyle, I read you like a book.
#19 Missing Work
Once had a person work for me who would always call out and use her past health problems as a crutch to miss work all the time. One Monday she called in, gave me some generic illness excuse and said she couldn't get out of bed. That morning another department had a breakfast meeting at IHOP and saw her there eating breakfast with her friends looking like she was in perfect health. The picture evidence sent to me was oh so satisfying.
#20 Mean Girls
A girl (let’s call her Karen) I went to school with was always telling little lies for absolutely no reason, and I always found it really irritating. My best friend and I had made a fake Facebook account to post nonsensical things when we were in eighth grade. We never said anything offensive to anyone, and our intent was just to make people confused and entertained. We had messaged Karen something dumb, like “I like to eat pizza on trampolines.”
Later that week at school, during a class the three of us had together, she said that (the fake account) added her on Facebook and wouldn’t stop messaging her saying he was outside her window and then kept texting and calling her. Karen claimed that she got the police involved and has a restraining order against the fake profile.
#21 Bad Manager
I had strep throat, so I called out sick to work. I was sick two days. My new manager called me and said I had a pattern of abusing my sick time, and that I would not be paid for my sick time. She explicitly mentioned that I always called three days in a row, and that I had exceeded the acceptable amount occurrences for the year. This was in October, I had a sick kid in February for one day, she started in June, so where was she getting this pattern from? I had three days over two occurrences for the entire year, both with doctor's notes, well under the five occurrences (each with up to three days sick) that HR puts a soft limit at.
Unluckily for her, I knew our schedule tracking system and how to get at my punched/missed hours, and I knew our policy regarding sick time and how abuse was handled, so I printed the policy, my last four years of attendance (along with my coworkers). I sat down with her, and she reiterated the accusation of abuse. I pulled out my last year, with two calls on it. She said the pattern was from before she started, so I pulled out the previous four years and the policy (10 occurrences over four years, remember that HR calls violation over 5 occurrences within one year). She said that I had more sick calls than anyone else, so I pulled theirs out too, and I was actually on the lower half of occurrences. My sick bank was near capped out. How would that be possible if I was a flagrant abuser of the system?
The backpeddling started. She said that she never said I wouldn't get paid. I pulled out my phone and played the recording for her; she thought my number was a landline and said I wasn't allowed to furnish cellphone messages while at work. I told her I get paid or I quit over hostile work environment, which would mean a very easy unemployment case, which would actually have to be payed out by my employer in this case. Which would mean my manager would be cooked.
I got paid for my sick time, and she made the next three years absolutely miserable for me. So unhappy story overall, but I still remember that one time.
#22 World Record Liar
I had a roommate who was a compulsive liar, one time he had just gotten back from a trip to the east coast and said he had gone on a run and done a four-minute mile, claiming living at our elevation (Colorado) must have been why. I had to point out that was almost as fast as the world record and that he didn’t run regularly and there was no way elevation difference would give you that much help. He just mumbled something and went off to his room.
#23 Liar Liar
In a large business meeting, boardroom style. Something went wrong on a project my company did. The executives were nervous as hell because we were being blamed for failure and the client was demanding we pay for it. The thing is I was the project manager for this job, and had recently been promoted. I warned the client about a potential problem when the project was underway, but they chose to ignore it and press on. Now that it was failing they wanted us to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix it, and our competitors were already about to take the next multimillion $ project.
So the client's manager outlines his case and asks when he can expect us to fix it for him, assuming we'll just cave in hopes of getting future business (that's my company's MO). They even said our on-site Rep should have caught the problem so this whole thing was our fault. Our project manager clearly didn't know what he was doing otherwise he would have caught this. My boss was about to respond, but I gently interrupted. I basically said, "I was the on-site PM and did catch the problem immediately I have a few documents for your perusal". I had with me the printed email exchange where I warned about the problem and advised how to fix it, as well as the client's very clear response that they thought it was worth the risk and wouldn't change anything. The client's face turned red. He looked at my bosses and said they should have told him who I was. We wound up paying for the fix anyway in exchange for being awarded the next project.
#24 Worst Friend
I found some receipts that indicated that my ex was somewhere other than where he said he was. Receipts that featured two adult menus and one child menu. I talked to my best friend about it because I was very distraught. The first thing she said was, "Just so we're clear, it isn't me." Of course it isn't I said.
Then as I'm texting her I'm still finding more receipts, so she's getting my reaction live on messenger as I'm pulling out receipts from the ex's bag. And then I found one last receipt which had her name written on it. So I said, "And the final flourish, a receipt for a clothes shop, credited to the loyalty account of BEST FRIEND. Care to explain?"
#25 Smelly Kid
My brother is in a stage where he's being super dirty and smelly and not taking showers. This one time I bought him a deodorant. I started seeing it in the same place for a couple of days... then weeks, IN THE SAME PLACE, not moving an inch. So I opened it and placed a paper inside in a way that if you opened the thing it would fall. A month later one of those days came when his smell was super gross and I ask him if he has been using it and he says yeah of course. I opened the thing and there it was the paper!!!!!
#26 I Can't Hear You
I was 10, my sister was five, and my other sister was three. I don't know what the argument was about, but my middle sister was trying to say something (loudly) to my baby sister, and my baby sister had her ears covered and was shouting, "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"
I really want them to stop arguing, so I can go back to reading my book. I look over at them, and not raising my voice at all I say "Yes, you can." Baby sister instantly replies, "No, I can't!" Middle sister and I just started laughing, which got my baby sister to stop shouting. And then I was able to get back to reading without leaving our room.
#27 Pink Eye
I work at a daycare. If a child is sick they will be sent home cause we don’t want to risk infecting the whole class (generally happens anyway). A lot of parents don’t agree with this policy which leads to parents arguing with us that their kid isn’t sick when they obviously are. My favorite time this happen was when a mother dropped her little boy off in an eye patch. Yep, the toddler was wearing a damn eye patch. I ask what happened and she says he hit his eye or something. Which I didn’t really believe.
She says whatever I do don’t take off his eye patch. I pick him up and immediately lift up his eye patch... pink eye. She was so mad at me for doing that. And she was shocked I did it. The look on her face was so satisfying. Although I got yelled at by my supervisor for it.
#28 Stollen Controller
A friend of mine way back in the day had the Super Nintendo. So did I, but he only had one controller when I had 2. With his cousin staying over at my friend's pretty much most days I let him borrow one of my controllers. Weeks passed and I asked for it back, to which I was told by my friend, that his cousin had taken it. When I was in my friend's house, I went upstairs to use the bathroom I could see the extra controller just laying on the floor, so I took it back. The muppet was angry that I went into his room and took my controller back. But it was great catching him out and getting that controller back.
#29 Cheater
Not me, but a friend of mine was just starting a long road trip to drop his girlfriend off after a trip (6+ hours) and they stopped at a gas station at the start where she ran in to get some snacks and use the restroom but left her phone there. Up pops a text message from a guy saying something like “You back from your trip yet babe?”
She comes back and he had enough time to compose himself to calmly ask her question after question slowly circling closer to the point where she realizes the jig is up and then he gets to go off on her as she tearfully admits to everything over the next several hours. I never want to be cheated on, but if I ever had been I wouldn’t be opposed to them being a captive audience for several hours.
#30 Not So Cool
I used to be friends with a guy who always relentlessly boasted about how many fancy motorbikes he’d ridden. But I caught him once and it was so juicy. So he tells me one day, as he does, “Oh yeah my mom let me ride her friends R1 (1000cc superbike), did 280mph, wheelied, great sound.” So as a present, I let him hop on my 50cc moped for a bit. He gets on and sits for a good while before turning to me and saying "So which is the thing you turn to make it move?” Spicy.
#31 High School Lies
I was in a bar when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It was a guy I went to school with. I didn't really hang out with him back then, but decided to catch up and share stories anyways. At one point he mentions sleeping with a girl I knew very well, a girl I knew for a fact never slept with anyone until after she graduated. I just kind of nodded and let him go. Then, I said something along the lines of "Oh, I actually know her very well, we'll have to hit her up, she comes out and drinks with me all the time!" He turned white. The look of horror in his eyes was great.
#32 On Your Landline
Them: I'm on my way.
Me: I'm talking to you on your landline.
#33 Who's Breaking Up With Who?
A guy in my circle of acquaintances was bragging to our mutual friend group that he'd dumped his girlfriend because she was such a bore, kept him at home all the time and kept him from enjoying himself. I'd been talking to both of them during their break-up phase, and knew she was the one dumping him because he was pretty irresponsible and didn't really pay attention to their relationship at all.
#34 She's Lying!
When I was a kid my parents were really strict about everything, especially staying home from school sick. Even to the point of sending me to school when I was actually sick but not "sick enough" to warrant staying home. One time my mom needed to get out of work for some reason and she was on the phone with them explaining how her kid was sick and she couldn't come in. My eight-year-old revenge was to pick up the phone in the kitchen and yell "SHE'S LYING" onto the line.
#35 No Mortgage
Sued a bloke for not paying his mortgage. He filed an application claiming he’d never been served with the court proceedings, and he’d just found them in his front yard. He also managed in two pages to set out eleven separate claimed defences to the claim. Oh and he also claimed he didn’t speak good English.
Something didn’t stack up. So I ran some court file searches and discovered he’d defaulted on another mortgage a few years earlier and filed the exact same affidavit back then. Even included the exact same photos of the court documents supposedly lying in his yard. The case did not end well for him.
#36 Candy Wrappers
When I went up to camp last year, I found out that someone had stolen candy from my tent. Considering that I had more valuable stuff in my tent, and I found a trail of candy wrappers in a linear pattern across the campsite, I determined that it had to have been a young kid whose parents would let him roam the site doing anything he wanted.
Thanks to the help of some other kids from the campsite, I found more clues and even had one of the kids wait by my tent to see if they could catch the kid in the act. He did, yet he was so fast and small that he could only see the back of his head. Yet that was enough evidence to find out who it was. When I inevitably found the kid, he denied it of course, yet I directly went to the parents with my evidence and witnesses. The kid still lied and the parents were more reserved around me from then on, yet the kid never roamed the site freely ever again.
#37 Playing Best Friends
A girl led me on only to tell me she couldn't date me because of my race. Well, she tried to lead me on again. But I made it a point to show as little interest as possible. Shit like walking past her without acknowledging I'd seen her and stonewalling ANY flirting attempts. She then gets the idea to make a friend of mine like her to make me jealous. But she picked one of my absolute best friends.
So IMMEDIATELY, he told me what was happening. She was always sending him and I the same snaps and saying she missed us. I think she assumed that we wouldn't talk to each other about this? Well, one night he and I were hanging out playing Halo, and we get a snap from her. So I send her a picture of him looking disappointed, and he sent her a picture of me looking disappointed. She didn't talk to us for a few months after that.
#38 Lying Cop
I got pulled over by a cop and accused of going faster than I knew I was. I asked him to show me the radar gun. He walked to his car and came back with the gun to show me the speed. I asked why it had a negative symbol in front of it and he explained "positive means coming toward me, negative means going away."
I quizzed him for a couple more minutes and eventually asked, are you sure you got me and not some faraway object? And he replied, "I had it trained right between your headlights." I asked him "how did you have it trained between my headlights if you caught me going AWAY from you?" He didn't show up for the court date.
#39 Lazy Worker
I worked with a guy who was extremely lazy. Every day in one 8-hour shift there were at least two-hour long smoke breaks and a combined hour of being on the shitter. Additionally, he was constantly on his phone when he was at work. So one day we were both sanding a long steel rail. Him on one side and I on the other side. While he was in the bathroom I made a small mark above his portion of the rail to be able to tell where he started. At lunchtime (roughly four hours later) I had done about 20-30 feet. of rail. He did about five. I questioned him about it to which his reply was “Nuh-uh bro...I’ve done at least 20 feet.” He was fired a short time later for being unproductive. It was bittersweet. He was a decent guy. Just sucked at our job.
#40 Compulsive Liar
I had a friend who is pretty much a compulsive liar and told everyone in our circle of friends a different story to victimize and take the blame off of himself when he was caught screwing up. What he didn't know is that the rest of us began compiling inconsistencies in his stories. So when he was calling me to tell me what "happened", I refuted each lie in his story and made him explicitly admit that he lied to all of us and that he would have continued lying if I hadn't called him out on it. I recorded and transcribed the call, sent it to all my other friends. Felt great.
#41 Where'd You Hear That Story?
I was sitting with a couple of friends and a guy I didn't know too well, all playing cards. We start swapping stories and the guy I didn't know starts telling the story of a time he went to a club. However, he had lifted the story word for word from a YouTube video, only changing the names. I started playing the video on my phone halfway through his story and connected it to the TV
#42 Where Are You?
Used to carpool with a friend. One morning I decided to just walk over to his house down the street as he was the driver that day. I called him to let him know I was waiting outside he answers and says right away, “I’m on my way just left my house." I then proceed with “Oh. Ok well just so you know I’m standing by your car waiting for you."
#43 Sports Agent
I come from a small-ish town. Brother made it the MLB. Was at the grocery store with my dad (who was wearing the MLB team’s jacket at the time). The checker says to us “You know I helped that kid get to the majors.” My dad just politely pulled out his ID and told him to check the last name. Checker just laughed embarrassingly, immediately shut up, and gave us extra monopoly tickets for our time.
#44 Nice Lie
My mom swore up and down that we weren’t getting a PlayStation for Christmas, because we couldn’t afford it at that time. Then Christmas morning came. I opened it up and I was ecstatic, I still remember it to this day even though I was five. I love my mom for all the sacrifices she made for us and I’m glad we’re better off financially.
#45 Stolen Package
I was around 15 years old and had a package delivered to my house. My neighbor came over, paced back and forth in front of the door before smoothly opening our gate, coming to the door, and picking up my package. I opened the door as she was walking off and she turned white as a ghost when she heard the door open. When I asked her WTF she was doing with my package, she explained to me that she was going to protect it for me, that she didn't know it was mine, before I demanded she hand over my package and leave. I snapped at this lady, which was abnormal for shy little 15-year-old me. I was furious because what was inside that package was a gift for my mother, who was at work at the time. I'll never forget that.
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