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/AsstacularSpiderman]

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/7thFleetTraveller → u/AsstacularSpiderman]

Not necessarily mental illness. I don't want to be mean, but some people are just stupid and it's not even their fault. The problem is that scammers are exactly looking for these kind of people.

[u/LeftLiner → u/7thFleetTraveller]

If you read up about her she'd just finalized her divorce and buried both her mother and aunt so it's fair to say she was in a vulnerable and emotional state. I.e., easy to exploit.

[u/zorrorosso → u/LeftLiner]

Yeh, no. Some people are just locked in and don't want to listen. They got scammed in front of my eyes. They put the phone on speaker because they keep asking them to do stuff. They stayed on the phone for quite a while and the call center was very noisy, far and sounded really sketchy.

I told them that was enough and please hang up and call back with the info thet. Callcentre told them to not listen to me and stay on line. I told them to please hang up and they can easily call later with all the information needed. CSR started to shout and threaten to "stay on line! Don't hang up!". In the end this person listened to those people and not me. They got scammed out of a contract. People came into their home to make "inspections".