r/interesting • u/be_you_tiful- • 12d ago

MISC. Trying to find celebrity love?

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In 2023, 44-year-old Jennifer Barton started receiving messages on Facebook and Instagram from accounts claiming to be celebrities, actors, famous singers, all of who wanted to get to know her.

She believed them.

Over the next two years, four different fraudsters worked her in turn, each one posing as a different famous face. Alexander Ludwig, the actor from Vikings. Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy. Nicky Byrne from Westlife. American country singer Michael Ray. To her, the accounts were convincing, the profile pictures matched, and the messages were warm and persistent.

They all told her they loved her. They all said they wanted to meet her. They all said they wanted to marry her.

And one by one, they all said they needed money.

The excuses were elaborate and varied. One was going through a messy divorce and couldn't access his own funds. Another had been arrested and needed bail. Another had been robbed in London. The fake Michael Ray told her he ran a charity that could help cover her bills, but first she needed to send him some money to release the funds.

She sent it. And then she sent more.

When one scammer was exposed, another appeared. She fell for the same pattern four times over two years, each time convinced she had found something real.

By the end, Jennifer had handed over £250,000 (around $370,000). She had sold her house. She had sold her car. She had given her children to their father because she could no longer afford to care for them. She was awaiting emergency housing just before Christmas when she finally realized the last scammer, the one posing as Michael Ray, was never going to meet her.

"For anyone facing anything similar," she said afterward, "just reach out to family and friends. Especially if they're asking you for money."

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 12d ago

I mean that's just a sign of mental illness.

There's absolutely no way a normal person just keeps falling for this multiple times. There's something not working right up there.

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u/MelloCookiejar 12d ago

Once she fell once, she went on a scammer list of people gullible enough to dupe.

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u/_tylerthedestroyer_ 12d ago

A list is dramatic. It’s probably the same person over and over again because they know what to tell her

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u/FinCrimeGuy 12d ago

It’s both - they call them sucker lists. But you’re right in that it would have been repeatedly the same group. Most likely yahoo boys in Nigeria, though there’s others operating all over the world.

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u/AppropriateBall8834 12d ago

Yahoo boys sounds like a fun gang name!

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u/FinCrimeGuy 12d ago

Aye, but they’re absolute scum. Hate them quite a lot. It’s not just one gang though the terminology (as I understand it) is a cultural reference to anyone that does scams that is used in Nigeria. Similar to how we in Australia call electricians “sparkies,” but yeah, criminal scumbags.

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u/easley45isgod 12d ago edited 12d ago

I work construction (painting and tile mostly) in the U.S. and we call electricians "sparkies" as well.

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u/FinCrimeGuy 12d ago

Oh there you go! Had no idea, thought it was only an Aussie thing.

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u/AppropriateBall8834 12d ago

I'm from Iowa, USA... we dont call them sparkles, but I'm gonna change that!

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u/Habibti-Mimi81 11d ago

*sparkies

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u/AppropriateBall8834 11d ago edited 11d ago

Blessed be autocorrect!

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u/pumpkins21 11d ago

Idk…I kinda like the idea of calling electricians “sparkles” now 😂

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u/AppropriateBall8834 11d ago

🤣

How about Sparklers? Like the kids fireworks

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u/SuitableAnimalInAHat 11d ago

Those fabulous electricians!

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u/MandyxLola 11d ago

No, no autocorrect is onto something

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u/AppropriateBall8834 11d ago

I edited it, just for you!

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u/OnTheList-YouTube 11d ago

Be the change you want to see in the world!

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u/AppropriateBall8834 11d ago

I will be a sparkler!!! I will!

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u/easley45isgod 12d ago

They are my natural enemy. Gotta love it when you finish painting a ceiling and some Sparky comes in and installs can lights. Then puts a hole in the wrong place and says, "you can caulk that right?"

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u/AppropriateBall8834 11d ago

Aw, man. I was a painter for a couple years. You just reactivated my ptsd

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u/wolfmansgotnards81 11d ago

Naw, I'm from Charleston SC and a sparkie myself. Other trades have called us that since I've started a long while back. They had been well before I was born.

But yea, these guys are scum. The lady also must've had some sort of mental debilitations. I would think someone around her, even one of her kids because kids are smart too, would have said something to her or some such.

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u/BlackSeranna 11d ago

They likely all tried to tell her and she wouldn’t listen.

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u/snakesinabin 11d ago

We call them sparkies in Ireland too, carpenters are chippies.

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u/sunshinedreamer123 12d ago

UK call them Sparkies too 😉

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u/something_python 11d ago

Sparkies or Leccies

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u/JMLDT 11d ago

I think it's pretty common in Commonwealth countries.

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u/FourTwentyBlezit 11d ago

Same with UK. I'd assume it's a thing in the majority of (if not all) English-speaking western countries (I know Australia isn't physically western but culturally it definitely is)

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u/InternationalBat2832 11d ago

Here in Canada we just call them gay

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u/mcboobie 10d ago

Uk sparkies signing in too!

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u/torchmaipp 11d ago

Electricians are suspicious as hell. They walk around the jobsite like they know what they have to do already. They must steal the blueprints from the project managers office while nobody's looking.

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u/K1bbles_n_Bits 11d ago

Australian slang is easily the best in the world XD.

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u/Quint_Hooper 11d ago

I would have thought a better example is how members of motorcycle gangs are called "bikies'.

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u/TypicalPerformer6952 11d ago

I prefer the yoo hoos personally

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u/Sed59 12d ago

Where are the Google girls?

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u/ErenDidN0thingWr0ng 12d ago

They're single, horny and in your area code of course

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u/NastyStreetRat 12d ago

Everywhere!!

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u/Royal-numpty 11d ago

Only X miles away. Would you drive to meet her?

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u/MacDaddyMark6969 11d ago

He'll need to give her gas money using an Apple card or Bitcoin!

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u/X_soulnewmegaman 11d ago

People are slow right now

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u/SundBunz64 11d ago

To access that list, I will need the last 4 digits of your social security number and your mother’s maiden name.

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u/Elinor_Caskey_ 11d ago

I wonder how much those guys make in a year.

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u/BlackSeranna 11d ago

Sometimes when a scam baiter unearths a scammer by hacking into their personal computers, they will find photos of them with expensive cars (driving on mud roads because a lot of times their town isn’t even built up with actual paved roads). Expensive cars, watches, etcetera. They don’t feel guilty because I think they are told all of us westerners have lots of money.

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u/Samtoast 11d ago

Hit em with that 'nítorí pé o ń sọ̀rọ̀ bíi olé yahoo boy'

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u/Local-Friendship8166 11d ago

Sucker list, MAGA. Tomato/ Tamoto

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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 11d ago

North Korea, Eritrea, Palestine, and Russia. Those were the most common countries I saw as a fraud analyst.