*Content Warning: sexual assault, false reporting, suicidal ideation, mature themes, religious abuse, cultic abuse, harassment, gun violence, parental alienation, breaking and entering, driving under the influence, upsetting themes. Sources: Elwood woman faces multiple felonies in connection with ongoing rental scheme [Video] Gay, L. (2023, May 3) for WTHR 13: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/elwood-woman-arrested-for-ongoing-rental-scheme-megan-Fishers woman charged with fraud against multiple people in rental scam, By: Katie Cox for WRTV Indianapolis (Apr 26, 2023): https://www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/crime/fishers-woman-charged-with-fraud-against-multiple-people-in-rental-scam Life After MLM by Roberta Blevins, Episode 230: Sandy Rusk: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/episode-230-sandy-rusk/id1553784236?i=1000650980806&l=nb The Truth About ITOWN Church Groups:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1308102203363481/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sandyrusk2022 Chloe Anagnos on X: @ChloeAnagnos https://x.com/ChloeAnagnos/status/1651260809362784261 The Sinking Arc by Megan Stoner, 2022: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-sinking-arc-megan-stoner-_OQ75y1JmbA/ iTown Indianapolis: https://itownchurch.com/ Lawsuit Accuses Church Planting Group of Allowing Florida Pastor to ‘Sexually Prey’ on Employee By Julie Roys, October 18, 2021: https://julieroys.com/lawsuit-accuses-church-planting-group-florida-pastor-sexually-prey/ Julie Roys on X: https://x.com/reachjulieroys Megan Stoner Chronicles on X: @ChroniclesMegan: https://x.com/ChroniclesMegan Resources:Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Theme Song & Artwork: Thank you to NeonHoney and GIBBANEZ for covering our theme song, Glad Rags’s original song U Think U this season. NeonHoney’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/neonhoneymusic/ NeonHoney’s Website: https://neonhoneymusic.comGibbanez IG: https://www.instagram.com/@gibbanezmusic/ Gibbanez Linktree: https://linktr.ee/gibbanezmusicGlad Rags: https://www.gladragsmusic.com/ The S22 cover art is by the Amazing Sara StewartFollow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo
Chapter 1: What are the content warnings for this episode?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This podcast is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.
Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Megan Stoner's responses to these allegations are addressed within this season. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong.
She wasn't really around politics much for the 2018 cycle. After the 2016 cycle, she was very much sort of phased out and nobody really saw her much in 2018.
That's Justin, whom we heard from in previous episodes this season. He's a former political acquaintance of Stoner's who has followed her crimes and social media drama over the years.
But she did have a very big social media presence because that was the year of Me Too. And she was constantly tweeting about how she was a sexual assault victim and how she had been assaulted by a very powerful man in the state of Indiana. And she made that very clear.
And she would often interact with women on social media as like a sister survivor and made that a very big part of her personality. That had already happened by the time I met her. But again, after Me Too sort of cycled out of the news, Megan very quickly kind of dropped that. I did not know at the time who she was referring to.
Just knowing of her and knowing about her, I always suspected it was not true. I couldn't imagine anyone would have done that to her just because, frankly, she was never important enough to have been alone in the room with a powerful man.
Like, she was a very grassroots-level volunteer who would come in and out, but I didn't think that was plausible, but she did make a very big deal of it on social media. Then she got very into her religion and churches, specifically the iTown Mega Church, which is a very large network of mega churches. They have a couple of campuses around the Indianapolis area.
And she went to, I think, their main campus, which is in Fishers, which is close to where she lived. And she very quickly gets in this big pissing match with the church. And it sort of triggered this year-long feud that she had online. Fast forward, so now we're into 2019. She gets involved with Hightown.
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Chapter 2: Who is Megan Stoner and what are her allegations?
I also had a horrendous experience there. I was curious what happened to you and what happened when they asked you to remove your post. I was thinking of coming out publicly with my story. As soon as I sent her that, she sent me back, hi, I'm actually starting a podcast about iTown. And she said, would it be possible to talk to you on the phone today?
I thought, wow, finally someone who is maybe taking notice of what's happening at iTown. I thought maybe this is someone who might have some information with me about my daughter. So that started her communicating with me. She seemed very odd, but I was just looking for information about my daughter. How do I find out what's going on behind those walls? How do I get to my daughter?
So I had a different kind of motivation meeting her, especially when she said that she was basically getting ready to come out about ITAM. And I'm thinking, oh, maybe there are other people who have had bad experiences that will now start telling their stories. Very quickly, she just kind of latched on to me.
Because I think that she liked the fact that I needed something that she wanted me to feel like she might be able to provide it. She was constantly creating drama to draw you into her story to either gain attention or for you to view her as a victim so that you would support her in some way.
And like most people have said, in the beginning, you feel like she's a little bit different, but you don't feel like she's a malicious type of person. And no one said this on your podcast yet, but Ashley, she could be very funny. Like sometimes she would come up with something that was just hilarious. So she's very entertaining at times and very engaging at times too.
I'm quite a bit older than her, obviously. And She seemed to almost need someone to kind of guide her a little bit, maybe be a little bit of a mentor to her. I never gave her money or anything like that. I never let her come and stay at my home. Nothing like that, but emotionally she seemed to just, I don't know, attach to me for some reason. I'd been struggling with it for two years.
She used that as an opportunity to make me think that she could help me, almost like dangling a carrot in front of me. You know, she made it seem like, oh, well, I have contacts with certain people that are still there and I can find out stuff. And she was just making it all up. Basically exploiting your pain for your attention. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yes. That's the best way to put it.
You hit the nail right on the head. The more that you would get to know her, the more of these things that she would share with you, like the people from iTown were showing up at her house and, threatening her and running her off the road. And as those kind of things started coming out, I'm like, no, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. She just had such a way of like sucking you in.
The whole thing about when she started saying that she received these sex toys in the mail and these really big designer cookies that are quite expensive. She would send me a picture of boxes of these cookies that she said that someone just randomly sent her. And she felt that maybe there was something in the cookies. I mean, just all of these crazy stories.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the iTown Church in this story?
And so she called me one day and she goes, oh, guess what? And I said, what? And she goes, I'm dating a realtor now. And I go, what? What do you mean? And she goes, yes, I was at this event and he bought me a drink. And, you know, and I'm thinking, and I said, so what's his name? And she told me and I pulled him up on Facebook and he was this young, cute guy.
And I'm looking at his Facebook page and he's married, like with a cute young wife. And I go, Megan, this guy you're talking about, he's married. And she goes, I can't believe that. Oh, well. And then she just changed the subject. But I'm like, how do you get I'm dating a realtor out of running into someone that was maybe pleasant to you at a networking event? I think it highlights her delusion.
What she would do to keep me engaged is she would, it was almost like she was catfishing us. Because she would contact me and she would say, oh, I found out something about my daughter. And I would be like, okay, what? What did you find out? She makes it sound like she's got the in with certain people that are upset there, but they don't want to leave because they're afraid, but they talk to her.
That's what she made me think. And then the final, you want to hear the final thing that she did? This was it. This was when I was done. So this would have been sometime around the end of April of 21. So her and I were talking on the phone and she probably called me like really late, maybe around midnight.
So I'm talking to her and she's telling me that my daughter had trouble with her car and she's like stranded. and that this other person that she had talked to had talked to my daughter, but she couldn't go and help her for whatever reason. So she made it sound like this other person was talking to my daughter, who was then talking to Megan, and then Megan was talking to me about it.
And she would be like, oh, wait a minute. I think so-and-so is going to go help her. Let me hear. Let me look and see what she just said. Oh, she said that she can't go yet, and she created this whole situation. And I go, you know what? I'm going to go. I thought if my daughter is stranded on the side of the road somewhere, I'm going to go save my daughter. I said, okay, where exactly is she?
And she tells me the street and it's like a half an hour drive from where I live. I get up and I get dressed and I'm like, I'm just going to go and I'm just going to pull up and to my daughter, I'm just going to say, get in. You're stranded, get in and just go and get her. And so I drive up there and where she told me she was supposed to be, there was no car there.
I went from that location and drove to where my daughter's house is. While I'm driving there, I'm still on the phone with Megan. And I drive there and guess what? My daughter's car is sitting safely in her driveway at the back of her house and all of her lights are off in her house. So she's obviously home and safe, not stranded on a road somewhere. I said, Megan, her car is at her house.
She's safely at home. And I just hung up on her. Because at that point, I'm like furious knowing that this whole evening of me being worried about my daughter was all just fake. Well, for two days, I think it was, I didn't talk to her at all. And then she finally got me on the phone and I just said, Megan, it's not true. My daughter was at home safely.
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Chapter 4: What incidents highlight Megan Stoner's behavior?
And my husband was one of the folks on the YR board who was running this convention in the fall. I was pregnant at the time. And so I was like, nope, not volunteering, sitting on my couch watching TV. So I said, hey, you go to the convention. You have fun. Say hi to everybody. But I can't work the registration table. I just can't do it.
And Kyle, my husband, said, hey, we've got someone that's emailing the young Republican email, I think by the name of Maggie Stone or another fake name. So it was super obvious who it was. And I said, oh, that's got to be Megan Stoner. She just wants to get in for free. These types of conventions and conferences, you normally have to pay like 250 bucks to maybe 200, something like that to get in.
But it includes the programming, your meals and some swag. So it's well worth it to network and meet like minded people and see friends and have fun. And so I'm like, gosh, you know, she's coming downtown all the time. Why doesn't she just want to fork over the money? That's ridiculous. So she started subtweeting my husband and everybody else that was on the planning committee.
And she was like, man, they're not going to let me volunteer. This is ridiculous. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She starts tagging my husband on Twitter because she knew that he was the one that was saying, no, we're good. Thanks.
And he responded and said, hey, we knew because you have a history of doing this, that if you were to attend and work the registration table, you would skip it and then just go into the event for free. We can only let people who actually volunteer do that. That's not fair to the other ticket holders. That's what happens most of the time.
You know, at these events, it's like, hey, to thank everybody for helping set up and putting out the T-shirt, doing the grunt work, we'll let you go into the programming for free and go and have a good drink and have fun. But Megan had a history of skipping out on that and going in and getting the perks without any of the actual work. So she threatened to call the media or something.
And then she went on some talk show that has since been deleted. It was called like Erupt News. It was some independent news thing. And they gave her a platform.
But the Twitter backlash that I have faced in the last 24 hours has absolutely been out of just, I never thought I would face this backlash. Being told that I'm not a royal Republican, being told that I'm taking advantage of the party. These things I have never been called my entire life and all of a sudden I'm being called these things. What a shame. But I will continue to be a voice.
I will continue to move and shake. And I think a lot of it comes down to jealousy. I think a lot of them are jealous that they've not had the monumental impact that I've had. And that's fine. Jealousy is really hard. There is one parody account that has absolutely trolled me for the last 18 hours. They have questioned everything in my life.
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Chapter 5: What legal troubles has Megan Stoner faced?
Yeah.
Do you, do you understand why people would not want to have you at events? I mean, do you understand why, okay, let's say that, you know, you did pay restitution or you did do something good, how people would not want to believe you because of your track record?
Yeah, that's fine.
So here's my question then. Why will you not admit publicly that you have been... Rental scam stuff, that's a totally different ballpark. And for that, I think you need to probably talk to a certified counselor or a priest, rabbi, whatever your religious affiliation is, right? But for the political stuff...
Why can you not just come out and say, hey, I have hurt so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, and I'm ready to make amends? Is it a pride thing? Is it fear? Like, what is it?
I mean, honestly, I've considered that, but I didn't know. That it would matter anyway, so that's why I've not done it, because I figured that nobody cares about my opinion or what I say, so I figured it wouldn't matter.
But you do realize that everybody is redeemable, and you can be redeemed if you start telling the truth. That's where the story turns around, is when you start telling the truth. It feels good to tell the truth. When you start telling the truth, you start to gain back that trust over and over and over and over again. So I don't know, like, again, I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV.
But if you were to talk to, you know, a lawyer about what are, you know, the nine felonies that you're currently facing and say, I did it. Give me parole. Give me whatever. You probably would avoid jail time. Obviously, you would need to talk to a lawyer. Again, I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV.
But I've noticed that when you tend to tell the truth and ask for forgiveness, it works better for you in the long run, right? You probably can start building back your reputation if you come out and say, I lied about this, this, this, this. Every single thing, I lied about it. I have a problem. I know I do. I'm working on it. And there you go. You are then free. But you have to want to do it.
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Chapter 6: How did Megan's actions affect her relationships?
Don't really discuss that. I mean, she came and got me when I was in jail with the DUI. I don't really know what to say to that. I mean, she was going to help me out with bail money this last time, but I ended up not going that route because I didn't want to owe her even more money. Yeah, I mean, as far as trust goes, I don't really know what to say. I mean...
She talked to me the night I got out of jail and we've talked since. I mean... I mean, she seems to care about me. I can say that much. Trust? I don't know.
Well, it's family. But still. But still. So your Amazon list, was that... Were those items for you or were those for students? Actually for students. I don't know. It just seems pretty fishy that... I mean, you only worked, how long did you actually work in a classroom though? Mount Vernon, you said a week. Options was what? Around that same time?
Yeah. I mean, you can, I have another friend that you can ask. I mean, I moved shit in. I mean, I took my stuff that I had, books, stickers, supplies, pencils, notebooks, erasers. I took all that stuff in the classroom with me.
So why keep sharing the list if you're not teaching, if you're not actively in the classroom? Do you see where the dots don't connect?
Yeah.
So it was for you?
Yeah.
Yeah. So it started as students and then it was just for you. Doesn't it feel good to be honest? Yeah. Let me ask you, I'll probably end with this. The DUI. Drinking, weed, what was it?
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Chapter 7: What are the community's reactions to Megan Stoner's scams?
Yeah.
Why? Attention. Say that again. For attention. For attention. I seem to be not a counselor. I'm just a journalism major. It seems that you need attention and you thrive off of it. And I think that moving forward in trying to right the wrongs that you have done, I think you need to keep that in the back of your head and say, am I really doing this for...
Megan, am I doing this for good reasons or am I doing it for Megan reasons? Because it seems as if every single step where there has been some type of wrong, it has been for attention. And no jury is going to fix that for you. That's got to be done on the inside. Right? Yeah.
I mean, I know everybody, and that's the other thing I want to address. I know everybody keeps talking about like a jury trial and all this. I hope everyone realizes that like, if I do go a jury trial and I don't take a plea bargain, which I don't know what I'm going to do yet. All I've done is consult with attorneys. I've not retained one. First of all, the jury trial would be dragged out.
It's not going to, I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly doubt it would be this year. And I'm sure your husband can agree. A jury trial probably would not happen in this calendar year. Even though it's scheduled to, I still doubt that it would actually happen.
Second of all, if I take a plea bargain, which I actually asked this question this weekend to an attorney, if I take a plea bargain, I'm still looking at a six to nine month turnaround time. It's not gonna be quick. So, I mean, there's that. I mean, nothing's gonna be quick. I doubt I'm gonna do a jury trial. Yeah, so, I mean, there's that.
I mean, I know everybody is thriving off the idea of coming to my jury trial. Well, first of all, I doubt we're going to go that route. Second of all, I've already been thinking about what a plea bargain would look like from a prosecutor's office.
Most cases don't go to trial, but I don't really have anything else. And I would highly recommend you not put anything on Twitter that says that you and I had any kind of productive conversation because at the end of the day, it was me...
Basically telling you what I already know to be true and that's that you've been lying And have been so I would highly suggest maybe not doing that but I Don't control. I'm that Facebook group that's out there. I'm not an admin. I don't know anything about it. I didn't make it the only thing I have been sharing is facts that I can prove and
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