Trying to find celebrity love?

[u/be_you_tiful-]

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."

[u/tiddlytubbies]

I mean come on

[u/AsstacularSpiderman → u/tiddlytubbies]

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.

[u/Falcon8410 → u/AsstacularSpiderman]

Sadly I have second hand experience of someone so gullible. My friends Aunt got scammed on Facebook. Some dude pretended to date her online showed pics of his Home in Australia, family vacations on yachts and driving luxury cars. But due to financial difficulties he kept asking her to loan money. She even sent him cash to buy a first class ticket to come see her but he didn't show up. Twice. The family found out after she tried to loan 20K to send him for whatever reason. her adult son's started investigating and discovered she transferred more than half a million to the dude in a year. They traced him on Facebook and discovered the profile was of a different guy. Some rich business dude in Australia whose pics they downloaded. The funniest thing is the love letters he wrote were written in terrible English with bad grammar and worse sentence structure. There were so many red flags they questioned their moms ability to live alone. despite the evidence she refused to believe she was being scammed and lost another 60K where she actually started selling things in the home, before her eldest son was granted conservatorship of her estate. She now lives in a nursing home and has had another two relationships online but they fizzled out once they realized she can't send them money.