Outlander fan gets scammed out of £10,000 by man posing as Sam Heughan
By Ariba Bhuvad
It is a sad day when someone scams a 72-year-old grandma by appealing to her love for Outlander and actor Sam Heughan (Jamie Fraser). Not cool, not cool at all!
As it turns out, this Outlander superfan, Mary Ryland, was duped by an Instagram cryptocurrency scammer, according to Yahoo! News. He was pretending to be Sam Heughan, and as any fan of his or the show can understand, if you think you're communicating with Sam Heughan, you're likely to make some rash decisions.
So, exactly how far did Mary go to talk to the man she thought was Sam Heughan? Find out below!
This Outlander superfan thought she was going to meet Sam Heughan
Ryland went as far as selling her engagement ring to make sure she could secure the funds the scammer wanted. Sadly, this would all be for moot when she learned that it wasn't Sam Heughan who she was chatting with over WhatsApp. Their correspondence went back and forth for months before Ryland decided to give in and send the money. The scammer even sent a copy of a fake passport to seal the deal!
Once trust was established, Ryland was convinced to deposit money into a cryptocurrency account. Over time, the scammer told Ryland that the investment was paying off and increasing, and demonstrated this using fake graphs.
There was a point where Ryland realized that she was sending money to a scammer after reading about someone else who was scammed in a similar fashion. But at that point, too much money had been spent and there was no way to get it back. And sadly, she still hasn't been able to.
The Preston native shared her thoughts about the whole ordeal, and honestly, it broke my heart. "It fooled me terribly. It was horrible," she said. "I really thought it was Sam. The scammer even sent me a passport with a name, date and it really fooled me. I think I'm a bit of a sucker for a sob story and celebrity impersonators. I don't want it to happen to others - it must be stopped. Instagram should know that a lot of people that post on those sites are scammers. Before you realise they've sucked you in quite badly."
Ryland believes that the scammer may have found her through her Facebook posts on an Outlander fan page. And once this individual(s) roped her in, the rest was history. Lots of money was sent, conversations were had, and hearts were broken.
Let it serve as a warning to be mindful of people posing to be celebrities and asking for money. Trust us when we say, these folks will not be engaging in things like this in their free time!
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