International model Jed Texas has been accused of scamming his Australian girlfriend out of $150,000 while behind bars in an Indonesian prison.
Texas, 34, whose real name is Jed Texas Higgins, was released from the notorious Kerobokan prison on March 26 after spending three and a half years locked up overseas.
But he allegedly continued to pretend he was in Bali jail in a series of messages to his Australian lover, Nadine Caller, long after he was deported to the UK.
Ms. Caller continued to send money to Texas weeks after his release as he continued to feed her lies about needing the money to bribe corrupt prison officials to secure an early release.
In a series of Instagram messages, Texas told Caller in April that he needed more money to pay “remissions” to jail officials that would supposedly shave months off his prison sentence.
Texas claimed to have set a launch date for September 26, but was actually already back on British soil.
Indonesian authorities confirmed to Daily Mail Australia this week that Texas was deported to England a day after his release in March, and was photographed at the airport being escorted out of the country.
“We will deport him via I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport on 27 March 2024 evening by Qatar Airways en route Denpasar London via Doha,” the officials said.
Nadine Caller and Jed Texas in happier times
Jed Texas poses with gifts provided by his alleged girlfriend Nadine Caller
‘Under Indonesian regulations, Jed has been blacklisted from entering Indonesia for at least six months, and his period could be extended.’
Caller, who met Texas in 2018 on Tinder, said she had long suspected her boyfriend had been cheating on her while he was behind bars.
She provided the Daily Mail Australia with multiple receipts detailing large transfers of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to accounts she was told belonged to prison staff who had to be bribed.
The Melbourne woman estimated she had transferred up to $150,000 in total to secure her lover’s custody and early release.
She also showered him with gifts while he was behind bars, providing him with phones and paying off guards to allow him to engage in unauthorized conjugal visits inside the notorious prison.
“As scammers do, they love to bombard you and I have to pay $150,000 to get him out early,” Caller told Daily Mail Australia.
“It sounds silly, but I have everything stored on my phone.”
Texas (center) is seen with Indonesian officials as he was deported from Bali on March 27.
Texas’ mugshot after his arrest in Bali
Texas with Indonesian officials on his last day in Bali before being deported to the UK
Ms Caller compared her ordeal to the Netflix show ‘The Tinder Swindler’, which tells the story of a scammer who posed as a wealthy, jet-setting diamond magnate to woo women online before scamming them out of millions of dollars.
“It’s pretty much the same thing, but from prison,” he said.
‘He was asking me for more money to get him out of jail, so I paid him money to get him an early release so he could get out.’
Ms. Caller suspects she is not the only woman Texas has used to obtain so-called remission payments, as another woman recently contacted her to warn her he had been released from jail.
“She said he was trying to trick her. It was always older women with money,” she said. “She told me he had been lying to me and that she had seen recent photos of him on holiday with his mother.”
Ms Caller said that while she previously believed all the money she had transferred had gone to corrupt officials, she now suspected Texas had access to the accounts.
“I’m 100 percent sure he’s doing this. And I’m 100 percent sure there are other people like me,” Caller said.
However, he also experienced first-hand the corruption within Bali’s prison system.
“I sat in an office with one of these (officials) who took my money in front of me and then had sex in prison. It cost me about 2,000 Australian dollars,” she said.
Texas and Nadine Caller met on Tinder in 2018
Texas and Nadine Caller
Ms. Caller claimed Texas would take more money from him on the grounds that he was sick and needed to pay to go to the hospital.
“When I started to back off and told him I didn’t believe him, that’s when he stopped texting me,” she said.
“As much as I want to believe people, I’m smart enough to know when I’m being scammed.”
Texas has since blocked Caller on Instagram and refused to answer her questions. She did not respond to further questions from the Daily Mail Australia.
Text messages seen by Daily Mail Australia show Texas claiming to have received a reduction in his sentence after becoming a Muslim.
“My gut told me he was a liar, but I wanted to believe him,” Caller said. “And that’s what he’s after.”
Texas claimed to have been in jail while in the UK
Message shows Texas asking for more money to bribe guards, while he is free from jail
Nadine Caller claimed Texas love bombed her
Fund transfers made by Nadine Caller to Texas
Ms. Caller said she had gone so far as to bring her own children to the prison to visit Texas.
“I feel like an idiot… But I have to take a stand. I have to do it. This is not my first time. If I don’t, I’m dead. Women like me can’t take this anymore,” she said.
“He told me he loved me and couldn’t wait to see me. It was all a lie… I’m so sad for him in so many ways.”
Texas was discovered by talent scouts as a teenager in North London and was a street punk, and rose to fame after modelling in gay magazine Attitude.
The famous modeling agency Elite Management immediately discovered him and sent him on assignments in New York, Stockholm and Marrakech.
His rapid rise to stardom led him to party with fashion legend Kate Moss and appear on the cover of Men’s Health magazine.
She went on to work for fashion luminaries such as Tom Ford, Burberry and Versace while walking international runways during Milan, Paris and New York fashion weeks and appearing in major fashion spreads for Vogue and GQ magazines.
In Australia, she worked with leading Australian modelling agency Chic Management in the trendy Sydney suburb of Woollahra and modelled for Myer.
Jed Texas had been a top model before his arrest.
Jed Texas was deported to the UK
During a raid on his villa in April 2020, Indonesian police said they found the drugs hidden in nine plastic bags.
According to police, Texas admitted to buying marijuana for $60 from an unknown man in the Kuta region of the resort island during the lockdown.
Indonesia is famous for its brutal drug laws.
Australian leaders of the Bali Nine heroin smuggling network, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed by firing squad in 2015 despite being model prisoners since their arrest in 2005.
Texas admitted his guilt and told the Denpasar District Court via video link from jail that his actions had left him “in pain and shrouded in shame”.
Police say that during the raid, which was prompted by a tip, Texas fled from his bedroom into the bathroom and attempted to flush the drugs down the toilet.
Texas told the court he treated his anxiety and mental illness by smoking marijuana and was dependent on drugs.
“I couldn’t go home (during the pandemic) so I bought a lot of marijuana to relieve my anxiety,” she said then.
The model was also fined approximately $109,000.
“I admit that consuming marijuana in Indonesia is against the law,” Texas told the court.
“I’m very sorry. I knew it was illegal, but I didn’t think the penalty would be as high as this. I use it to treat psychological disorders.”
“This case has left me with constant pain and shame. My family has also been affected. I never thought of breaking the law when I was on holiday in Bali.”
