The case has an air of ‘already seen’. As RTL Brugique reports, a 46 -year -old woman baptized Caroline, was deceived by a scammer who pretended to be the American actor Leonardo DiCaprio. He would have stolen all his savings.
The story begins in Rotterdam in 2020. At that time, Caroline was working to clean the streets of the city. “The best job I have done!” Remember the victim, questioned by HLN.
Caroline claims not to be a fan of the actor of Wall Street Wolf. “But I was impressed by his environmental efforts, especially with his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation,” she says. So, when the false Leonardo DiCaprio complements her with her work, Caroline is delighted.
“I want to be there for him”
During the days, it is a real epistolary relationship that is established between the false Leonardo DiCaprio and Caroline. They discuss their meals, the life of women and quickly, exchanges become more personal. He tells him about his supposed violent relationship with his partner at that time, Camila Morrone. Caroline, having experienced a similar relationship, feels closer to the offender. “I didn’t say everything for granted, but he had an answer to everything,” she says.
At the same time, the scammer does not hesitate to make “love bombing”, a love manipulation technique that consists in immersing his goal of signs of disproportionate affection from the beginning of the relationship to control it. “Leonardo said: You work too hard. Be careful not to have too much stress. Think about you,” he recalls.
This is called the scam of feelings. The principle is quite simple: expecting an alleged relationship with a victim to gain his trust and, above all, extract money from him.
Little by little, the woman trusts the alleged actor and then moves away from her loved ones to devote to her virtual relationship. “I wanted it to always be available. For him, of course. In retrospect, I realize that he tried to isolate me,” observes the quarantine.
And, if most communications are made by messages, Crook always finds a way to dodge telephone call requests.
Blackmail, naked and data on the dark website
And this is where Caroline’s trap closes. The false Leonardo DiCaprio then talks with him about two young patients with cancer. “Leonardo had found two small patients with cancer in an orphanage in Nigeria. He touched me a lot. He asked me if I could help with medications and food,” said the victim.
Then he agreed to send money for medications and food, mainly in the form of gift cards. “It works like this: you buy cards and take photos. Then you can enter the numbers of the card and ask for things. Or exchange them for bitcoins,” he explains. This is how its 5,000 euros in savings increase in smoke.
The false actor promised him a job at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and beautiful trips in the private jet. Promises in the air, therefore. But when Caroline realizes the deception, it’s too late. All their personal information, including their bank contact data and identity photos and even two naked photos (“naked”), were on sale on the dark website. “For his birthday, Leonardo asked me to send him two nudes. I did it. Yes, he is stupid,” he admits.
When she threatens the offender to stop everything, he uses her naked photos to blackmail him and threatens to extend them to those around him. “He got angry and said she was an old wrinkled, useless, bad woman,” said the victim.
“I have not lost money”
Dispored, Caroline then decides to talk about her virtual relationship with her friends. As expected, the violent reactions were not long to arrive. “‘You are crazy!’, ‘Idite’, ‘How can you be so stupid?
This is not the first time that the figure of American artists has been used in such scams. Last January, a French woman was scammed for more than 830,000 euros. For long months, an individual had pretended to be Brad Pitt to extract tens of thousands of euros from a 53 -year -old woman who thought about living a romantic relationship with the actor.
Source: BFM TV
