It’s one thing to simply pretend to be another, it’s something else when you manage to convince presidents and major banks that you’re this person, even when you’re not.
The doctor aboard a destroyer
Ferdinand Waldo Demara used Canadian doctor Joseph Cyr’s identity in 1951 to join the Royal Canadian Navy. He ended up aboard HMCS Cayuga during the Korean War. That alone would’ve been bad enough, but then wounded soldiers arrived, and Demara had no medical degree.
But instead of confessing the truth, he supposedly worked from medical books while treating them. Yes, that included performing surgery. Nobody caught on, at least not immediately. It took newspaper coverage reaching the real Cyr’s mother back in Canada for the truth to come out. That was only the start of Demara being an imposter, though, as he later faked being a sheriff’s deputy and a doctor of applied psychology, among other things.
The boy who came home different
Nicholas Barclay was a boy who disappeared from Texas in 1994 at age 13. His family was naturally devastated, until three years later, when they were told he’d turned up in Spain. They believed it. Except the person waiting there wasn’t Barclay, it was a 23-year-old Frenchman named Frédéric Bourdin. He convinced the family he was Barclay.
There were some differences, such as the fact that Bourdin was clearly older and had different colored eyes. He also spoke with a French accent. Yet Bourdin claimed he’d been kidnapped and his traffickers had changed his eye color. Bourdin lived as Nicholas for months before investigators pulled the story apart.
A Rockefeller appeared in Boston
Being a Rockefeller could open plenty of doors, especially in wealthy Boston circles. Christian Gerhartsreiter knew that, and that’s why the German immigrant spent years presenting himself as Clark Rockefeller. He joined the exclusive Algonquin Club and married high-earning consultant Sandra Boss in 1995.
Boss supported their household, and they had a child together. She said that he soon became controlling, however, and she decided to divorce him. She looked into his real life and found out that, actually, he’d never been a Rockefeller. It was all a lie.
Anastasia seemed to have survived
The idea of one member of Russia’s royal family surviving and secretly making it to Germany sounds too good to be true. It was. But it was the tale that Anna Anderson told people after appearing in Berlin in the 1920s. She claimed she was Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, and it led to many questions about her real identity. Many people actually believed her.
The surviving members of the Romanov family rejected her claims, of course. Anderson herself died in 1984, before DNA testing became common. Her body was exhumed in 1991, and DNA testing proved there was no match. It’s unclear whether Anderson deliberately tried to lie, or whether she was so mentally ill that she believed her claims. We’ll never really know.
Manhattan met Sidney Poitier’s ‘son’
A famous surname can get you pretty far, and that’s exactly what David Hampton discovered in early-1980s Manhattan. He introduced himself as the son of actor Sidney Poitier. Hampton claimed he’d been robbed or was temporarily stuck without somewhere to stay, so wealthy New Yorkers invited him into their homes. They fed him and gave him a place to stay.
Some of them even gave him money, if you can believe that. Poitier did have daughters, but Hampton definitely wasn’t one of his children, and police arrested him in 1983. His lies actually became so famous that John Guare created a play based on them, titled Six Degrees of Separation.
The con that became a movie
You might be surprised to know that the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can is actually based on a true story. Yes, it’s based on the life and lies of a man named Frank Abagnale Jr. He claimed he’d posed as a Pan Am pilot and worked as a doctor while he was a young man. He said he passed Louisiana’s bar exam, too.
But all of that was a lie. Turns out, the imposter was lying about being an imposter. Researchers checked records and found major holes in Abagnale’s story. For starters, he was in prison during the time when several of his ‘adventures’ supposedly happened. There was no evidence that he passed the state bar, either. Just lies upon lies upon lies.
The official nobody appointed
Stanley Clifford Weyman was a master imposter, as he faked numerous careers throughout his life. He claimed to be different military officers and government representatives, as well as doctors, diplomats, and other people with authority. But one of his strangest performances happened in 1921.
Weyman pretended to be a State Department official while Princess Fatima of Afghanistan was visiting America. He actually helped arrange her meeting with President Warren G. Harding. He was that believable. Weyman was killed in 1960 while trying to stop a robbery. It’s strange, but it seems the imposter did have some morals.
He kept walking onto the field
One of the most important parts of being an imposter involves just acting like you belong there. That’s exactly what the Michigan businessman Barry Bremen did, and at the 1979 NBA All-Star Game, he put on a Kansas City Kings uniform. He walked onto the court for warmups with actual NBA players, pretending to be one of them.
Later on, he dressed as a New York Yankee during baseball’s All-Star festivities and appeared at a World Series game dressed as an umpire. He also appeared on the course during a practice round at the 1985 U.S. Open. Unlike some of the imposters, he wasn’t exactly stealing identities, but rather borrowing entire professions for an afternoon.
MI5 supposedly needed him
Robert Hendy-Freegard was a man who pretended to be an officer for MI5, the British intelligence service. His lies started in the 1990s, when he told people he was working undercover against the Irish terrorist group, the IRA. He warned that ordinary police officers or strangers could be enemy agents.Â
It got to the point where several of his victims cut themselves off from relatives and moved around. They gave him money while following his instructions, believing they were in danger. It went on for years. The lies eventually came out, and a British jury convicted him in 2005.
Television’s CIA veteran wasn’t one
There wasn’t much reason to question Wayne Simmons. He appeared on Fox News, talking about terrorism and national security, after all. Simmons claimed he’d spent 27 years working for the CIA. But he hadn’t. The lies actually went pretty deep, and he used this supposed intelligence career to receive work involving government contractors.Â
Federal investigators eventually checked and discovered he’d never worked for the CIA at all. He pleaded guilty to major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and a firearms charge. Simmons received a 33-month federal prison sentence in 2016.
Cancer built a wellness business
Belle Gibson’s story sure was extraordinary. She claimed to have had terminal brain cancer, but had managed to survive largely through food and alternative wellness practices. Thousands of people believed her. It got to the point where her Whole Pantry app became very successful in 2013, and she even released a cookbook, too.
She also said some of the profits from her business went to charities. But it was all a lie. Gibson admitted in 2015 that she’d never had cancer, and an Australian federal court later conducted their own investigation. It forced her to pay A$410,000 in penalties, or around US$416,000 today. She hasn’t paid a single cent of it.
A survivor became the group’s president
You have to be a special kind of evil to lie about being in something as devastating as 9/11. But that’s what Tania Head did. She’d become president of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network after telling a detailed story about escaping the South Tower. She claimed her fiancé died in the North Tower.Â
Reporters looked into her background in 2007, only to discover that Merrill Lynch hadn’t employed her at the World Trade Center. Harvard and Stanford had no record of her, either. The truth was, her real name was Alicia Esteve Head, and she’d been in Barcelona around the time of the attacks. Truly awful stuff.
His prisoner number wasn’t his
Enric Marco had stood for years before audiences in Spain. He’d told a story about how he’d personally survived Flossenbürg, a Nazi concentration camp, and later became president of the Amical de Mauthausen survivors’ association. He gave many talks about his experiences.
Historian Benito Bermejo became suspicious of his claims and began checking German records, only to find a very different story. Marco had gone to Germany as a worker in 1941. He was definitely not the concentration-camp prisoner he claimed to be. The truth only came to light in 2005, and Marco never apologized for his lies.
New York got an heiress
She had money somewhere. That’s what alleged German heiress Anna Delvey always told people, she had money somewhere, but it was stuck overseas. She’d sometimes say a wire transfer was delayed. Her real name was Anna Sorokin, and she was nowhere near as rich as she pretended to be.
Delvey spent years moving through expensive New York hotels and social circles while claiming to be wealthy. She pursued plans for a private arts club and tried to get major financing using false financial documents. But the stack of unpaid bills and failed transactions eventually caught up with her. A Manhattan jury convicted her in 2019 for multiple offenses.
The prince came with diplomatic plates
Anthony Gignac took his Saudi prince act pretty seriously. He used names linked to the royal family and rode around in expensive cars with fake diplomatic plates on them. Subtlety wasn’t his strong suit, clearly.Â
Prosecutors claimed that investors lost over $8 million through schemes connected to his fake identity. Gignac tried to use the prince story to get a luxury hotel deal in Florida, although investigators later found the truth. They even found a fake Diplomatic Security Service badge. He received a sentence of over 18 years in prison in 2019.
America knew his television face
You might remember the famous 1971 Keep America Beautiful commercial. You know, the one with Iron Eyes Cody, a Native American man who starts crying after seeing trash on the highway. The problem is that Cody wasn’t actually Native American, or even called Cody.
He was born Espera Oscar de Corti in Louisiana to Italian immigrant parents, Antonio de Corti and Francesca Salpietra. A Times-Picayune investigation revealed the truth in 1996, but Cody rejected the story and kept identifying himself as Native American. He couldn’t admit the truth.
The NHL approved the deal
John Spano was pretty skilled with his words, and he almost managed to buy an NHL team using them. Spano agreed to purchase the New York Islanders for about $165 million in 1996. He presented himself as a businessman worth hundreds of millions, and the league approved him.Â
Spano actually controlled the team for a short time. That is, until the payments came. One $17 million check bounced, and another that was meant to be the same amount arrived as $1,700 instead. The deal collapsed in 1997. Spano later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
13 archaeological hoaxes that fooled people for way too long
Some archaeological fakes managed to last a surprisingly long time, all because they looked convincing enough or gave experts the answer they were hoping to find.
13 archaeological hoaxes that fooled people for way too long
