A lonely widow has lost her life savings to a cruel fraudster pretending to be the chief executive of a North Sea firm who had been badly injured in a hit-and-run incident.
The fake oil worker, who called himself Robert Vincent, began catfishing the 91-year-old pensioner from Ontario, Canada, via Instagram more than a year ago.
He disguised his identity by sending his victim images of Peter Marc Jacobson, a US television writer and producer who created the 1990s sitcom The Nanny and also appeared in episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and Dynasty.
Over a 16-month period, his unsuspecting victim shelled out $8,000 of her hard-earned cash to bail the fictitious 71-year-old out of a series of unlucky mishaps, which never actually happened.
Vincent’s last attempts to fleece the OAP were finally foiled by EV’s sister site, The Press and Journal, after he claimed to be stuck in an Aberdeen hospital following a hit-and-run collision.
‘He’s in a private hospital and has no money to pay the bills’
Concerned for Vincent’s well-being, the elderly woman contacted the P&J to ask for help with his predicament.
“He was walking down the street, across the road, and a car hit him. It was a hit-and-run,” Vincent’s victim, who does not want to be named, said.
“The doctors told him that he was in a coma for 36 hours. I’ve got pictures that he sent me online of him in the hospital bed.
“He is still in pain. He cannot get up and walk. He’s in a private hospital and has no money to pay the bills,” she explained.
“He asked, ‘Why haven’t you heard about this?’ He was surprised that it wasn’t all over the news. It happened last Thursday night.”
© Supplied by -But when the woman shared details of her conversations with the “romantic” engineer – who claimed to be from Georgia in the USA – his web of lies began to unravel.
Police Scotland could not confirm, using the vague details provided by Vincent, whether a hit-and-run collision had even taken place.
But a nurse at Albyn Hospital, the only private facility of its kind in Aberdeen, confirmed that no Robert Vincent had ever been admitted to the hospital.
The Press and Journal then shared the photo, supposedly showing Vincent in one of their beds, with the Circle Health Group, which owns Albyn Hospital.
A spokesman confirmed: “The hospital bed, gown, and wristband are not from Albyn Hospital.”
‘He made me feel good’
Vincent’s online lady friend had already loaned him around $8,000 by this stage.
The self-described CEO of a company with 400 employees had told her that he wanted to leave an oil rig in the North Sea, retire, and move to Canada to be together.
She’d paid for his airfare, costing up to $3,000, but he later said he couldn’t use the tickets because he needed to renew his recently expired passport.
The oblivious OAP sent even more money to help Vincent with securing a replacement passport before his accident.
“He said he has lots of money and all that cash was going to be paid back to me the minute he could get to a bank in Aberdeen,” she told us from her home in Canada.
“When the car hit him and he went down he lost his iPhone so he’s using the phone of the man beside his hospital bed,” she added.
“He’s very romantic. He constantly sends me sweet, lovely messages. I was on Instagram one day and he said he was looking for a companion to talk to.
“I’ve never done this and I’d been on the computer for years. He said he liked dogs and I thought he sounds like a good enough guy.
“I immediately replied and we got chatting and I asked, ‘How old are you because I’m a lot older than you?’ and he said, ‘Age doesn’t matter at all’. That’s how we started. He made me feel good.”
© Supplied by -When the pensioner sent our reporter the photos that Vincent had claimed were of himself, we used reverse image searches to confirm their true identity.
They were taken from webpages and social media sites linked to Peter Marc Jacobson, 65, who is an American television writer and producer.
One image that Vincent claimed was of himself in his cabin in the North Sea was faked by superimposing a cutout of Mr Jacobson on top of a stock photograph of an offshore sleeping cabin.
The Press and Journal traced the image’s origin back to a 2015 photograph taken onboard the Armada gas condensate platform then operated by BG Group Plc, in the North Sea, off the coast of Aberdeen.
© Supplied by -On closer inspection – although not necessarily visible to the eyesight of the 91-year-old – was a white outline around Mr Jacobson’s photograph as well as the unremoved watermark.
Vincent, who’d described himself as the Spanish-born divorcee of a junkie who’d secured custody of their kids, also sent his victim a suspicious image of his passport in which his personal information appeared to be clearer or in better focus than other text on the document.
After our reporter broke the news that the man she had been communicating with for more than a year was actually a fraudster, the widow said she felt “upset” and “disturbed”.
Even after she confronted the con man with our findings, he asked her to pay $150 so he could access the internet from his hospital bed.
She’d previously sent him $300 at a time for similar requests – but this time her answer was different.
“I have told him that there is no more money. I have used everything that I have. My bank account is empty. I’m broke,” she said.
“I haven’t heard from him too much since. He said he thought I was his friend and asked why I wasn’t worried about him being so sick and in the hospital.
“I wish I could get my money back. He had all the God damn answers. I should have known better.”