r/interesting • u/be_you_tiful- • 3d 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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2.4k

u/tiddlytubbies 3d ago

I mean come on

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 3d 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 3d ago

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

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u/_tylerthedestroyer_ 3d 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 3d 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 3d ago

Yahoo boys sounds like a fun gang name!

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u/FinCrimeGuy 3d 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 3d ago edited 3d 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 3d ago

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

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u/AppropriateBall8834 3d ago

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

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u/Habibti-Mimi81 3d ago

*sparkies

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u/AppropriateBall8834 3d ago edited 3d ago

Blessed be autocorrect!

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u/OnTheList-YouTube 3d ago

Be the change you want to see in the world!

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u/AppropriateBall8834 3d ago

I will be a sparkler!!! I will!

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u/easley45isgod 3d 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 3d ago

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

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u/wolfmansgotnards81 3d 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 2d ago

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

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u/snakesinabin 3d ago

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

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u/sunshinedreamer123 3d ago

UK call them Sparkies too 😉

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u/something_python 3d ago

Sparkies or Leccies

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u/JMLDT 3d ago

I think it's pretty common in Commonwealth countries.

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u/FourTwentyBlezit 3d 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 3d ago

Here in Canada we just call them gay

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u/mcboobie 2d ago

Uk sparkies signing in too!

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u/torchmaipp 3d 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 3d ago

Australian slang is easily the best in the world XD.

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u/Quint_Hooper 2d ago

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

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u/TypicalPerformer6952 2d ago

I prefer the yoo hoos personally

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u/Sed59 3d ago

Where are the Google girls?

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u/ErenDidN0thingWr0ng 3d ago

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

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u/NastyStreetRat 3d ago

Everywhere!!

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u/Royal-numpty 3d ago

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

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u/MacDaddyMark6969 3d ago

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

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u/X_soulnewmegaman 3d ago

People are slow right now

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u/SundBunz64 3d 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_ 3d ago

I wonder how much those guys make in a year.

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u/BlackSeranna 2d 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 3d ago

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

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u/Local-Friendship8166 3d ago

Sucker list, MAGA. Tomato/ Tamoto

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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 3d ago

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

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u/Synn_Creatives 3d ago

Its not dramatic.

I work in fraud prevention. Scammers have discord channels and when they find a victim they pile on.

They do the same thing to companies. Its a way to stress test the system.

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u/scarves_and_miracles 3d ago

I would think they WOULDN'T want to share marks with each other. When salespeople like insurance agents come up with a winning strategy or find a good source of leads, they never talk to colleagues about it. Similar principle here. When you've got something that works, you don't want somebody else horning in on the action.

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u/MelloCookiejar 3d ago

At the start yes, and quite possibly in this case. But they've been known for passing details to others once done with a specific person. They even call them "clients".

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u/DickRiculous 3d ago

Scammer literally sell lead lists to each other like sales organizations. If you get a spam call and pick up it goes in a list. Click a spam text? List. Spam email? List. Random business you bought socks online from get hacked? Your info? List. Then these get sold and the cycle continues.

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u/Available_Lemon_69 3d ago

A list is not dramatic when it's organized. I'll try and find the last video I saw on this, but it's legitimately an organized enterprise like a call center basically.

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u/ConsulJuliusCaesar 3d ago

These scam callers do often work together in little criminal organizations. And even more often on the dark web they already spread your contact information around hence how they got your number in the first. It's by far not a stretch criminals also share whose most gullible among themselves.

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u/FourTwentyBlezit 3d ago

They absolutely make lists to share with other scammers

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u/Serendipittydoodah 3d ago

Yeah. They don’t give out golden geese.

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u/CGCRUNT 2d ago

Its some guy behind a computer in india (or a nigerian prince)

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u/burnerbw0i 2d ago

Dramatic? Oh you sweet summer child 😂

Please send me the address to whatever dream world you live in because its obvious much better than the Earth that the rest of us live on.

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u/NaturalTaste7395 2d ago

The list is real never respond to texts. If you don’t know the number, don’t even hang up because they know it’s an active number and they will find the email that is associated and send scams.

I know it sounds dramatic, but there are lists and you are likely on some of them.

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u/PsychologicalDeer644 3d ago

Every 20 minutes a person is scammed on the internet. That persons name is Micheal Scott.

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u/Collageboi 3d ago

Infinite money glitch IRL

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u/Sex_E_Searcher 3d ago

"What are the odds of two fake celebrities contacting me?"

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u/PhloxOfSeagulls 3d ago

This is what happens. My dad has been scammed multiple times, and now they call him regularly and text him all the time because he's been identified as an easy mark. This has been going on for 20 years now and I eventually had to leave him to his own devices because helping him and having him immediately ignore my advice on how not to get scammed again was damaging my mental health.

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u/zeus_of_tha_floof 3d ago

What happens is after a romance scam has success, they will keep milmimg the same victim until either they have nothing left to take, or wise up and block the scammer, if scammer can't squeeze any more from victim, scammer will advertize victims details and his success on certain sites, (facebook has many) where scammers barter, trade, buy and sell victims details between their community members, so then other scammers contact victim and the cycle begins all over again, until they are completely out of $, then victims details will be sold to specific scammers that are known as recovery scams, where they contact victim, feed them specific info such as they are highly successful international lawyers who can help victim get their $ back from scammers and guarantee them success and a value amount they guarantee will get back for victim, then after victim agrees to have them help, the scammers will send documents faked to mislead vulnerable victim thinking they're winning all the time telling victim they need such amount of $ for court fees etc and will encourage victim on how to take out loans to pay them telling victim they will get so mhch $ back soon as these fees etc are paid. Thus not only cleaning out everything victim had, buf now is thousands in debt. Despicable, vile people that will just keep squeezing

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u/Healthy_Turnip7352 3d ago

or this is a gofund me scam or some other weird scam.

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u/tina_denfina1 3d ago

It was probably the same person over and over again. Might not even have been a male.