For more than eight years, romance scammers have used photos of Hunter Bigham, a sales executive from Tupelo, Mississippi, to build hundreds of fake online profiles, according to an Associated Press report published by 1News. When victims realise they have been deceived, many dig until they find the real man behind the face. Losses reported to him by victims who got in touch add up to roughly $1.4 million.
Many names, one face. Victims knew him as Vince, Roberto or, most often, Henry Clerk. The AP found 177 Facebook accounts under that name alone using his photos. Scammers presented him as a widowed petroleum geologist in Houston, a Spanish secret agent or an oil rig worker stuck at sea. Victims contacted him from the United States, Spain, Venezuela and Hong Kong, and at the peak up to 15 a day reached out.
Bait, not target. Bigham says some victims, wrongly believing he was the scammer, threatened him and his family. One woman, a retired cancer survivor, told him she lost $75,000 to a scammer who claimed to be his identical twin. He says his requests to platforms to remove the fake profiles have been largely rejected, and his complaints to the FBI have gone nowhere.
I realised it's not because I'm so good looking. It's just because I am so average that I look attainable.
Why it matters
Not an isolated case. Bryan Denny, a retired US Army colonel whose pictures have been used by romance scammers for a decade, co-founded Advocating Against Romance Scammers. He says the group has reported more than 3,000 fake profiles of him to Facebook, and it backed a recently enacted law requiring dating apps to warn users when they are talking to someone banned for suspected fraud. Even investigators are targeted: retired FBI official Rebecca Keithley says she was impersonated twice this year, and a fake Facebook account was restored after removal. Meta said it had been reinstated in error.
Platforms respond. Meta told the AP it removed over 179 million accounts, pages and groups for misrepresenting identity in the first half of 2026, mostly before any report, and that AI tests cut reports about the most impersonated celebrities by over 80%. LinkedIn said 99.7% of the fake accounts it removes are shut down before a report. Bigham still blames the platforms: "They could stop this today."
- Reverse-search profile photos of online partners you have never met in person.
- Be wary of stories that keep someone permanently out of reach, such as working on an oil rig at sea.
- Never send money to someone you only know online, whatever the reason.
- If the face is real but the person is not, report the profile to the platform.
Source: 1News
Leave a Reply