A fraudster has posed as Fast and Furious actor Jason Statham in a bid to scam a fan out of money.
The BBC reports that the unnamed woman had been on a Facebook page dedicated to the Hollywood star when she was contacted by someone claiming to be Statham.
"I thought 'Oh, that's nice of him, talking to his fans'," she said.
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"I might have been star-struck then, I don't know."
The scammer then encouraged the woman to move onto the encrypted messaging service, WhatsApp, where they exchanged hundreds of messages over the several months that followed.
According to a recreation by the BBC, in one series of messages the fraudster wrote: "Just send £20k this night and tomorrow you do the same then by Friday it's already done.
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"Baby. Where are you I miss you.
"Talk to me baby. Baby where are you."
The woman explained how she felt she was building a relationship with the person, who told her he loved her.
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Looking back, she admitted she may have been tricked because she was in a vulnerable place.
"I don't feel like I was in the right place myself because of what I'd been through," she said.
Eventually, talk turned to money and the fraudster asked her to help with financial difficulties - claiming payment from a film he'd worked on had been delayed.
The woman then made a series of payments to the Statham impostor, which apparently totalled thousands of pounds.
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She has not divulged exactly how much she transferred to the person, but revealed it was a 'substantial amount' that 'would have made a difference to my life and my family'.
The woman later decided to report the online scam to Greater Manchester Police, which was when the Economic Crime Unit launched an investigation into what had happened.
"This lady has been subject to somebody who just tricked her at a very vulnerable time in her life," said Det. Con. Craig Moylon, who was involved in the investigation.
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"When you see the relentless messaging that this lady got from this person and you see the grooming and the exploitation... the impact is extraordinary."
It is believed the scammer responsible was operating from overseas, meaning GMP has not yet been unable to prosecute anyone in relation to the incident.
Moylon also said the woman's experience was part of a much wider 'epidemic', with the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales showing 6.6 per cent of adults (just over three million people) had experienced some form of fraud in 2018.
"We all know it's the tip of the iceberg," he said.
"The amount of people that report fraud are probably about 5-10 per cent of the amount of people who actually are victims.
"Fraud is an epidemic. We've got big problems that we're trying to tackle."
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