Don't Fall For It

CHAPTER 13How Gullible Are You?

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud.

—John Kenneth Galbraith

Jason Statham has appeared in over 40 major motion pictures, which have grossed upwards of $1 billion in ticket sales. The British actor has a penchant for action movies, appearing in a handful of the Fast & Furious movies, The Expendables franchise, and a plethora of other films with extended fight scenes, car chases, and stuff getting blown up. I’m partial to his early work in his roles as Turkish in Snatch and Bacon in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, both Guy Ritchie movies, but movie fans obviously enjoy his work.

While Statham is known as an action movie star, he is most certainly not known for reaching out to fans of his movies on Facebook and asking them for money. A woman in England told the BBC she lost a fortune after being contacted on a Fast & Furious fan page on the social media site by a man claiming to be Statham. The two sent hundreds of messages back and forth to over the next several months, leading the woman to believe she’d built a solid relationship with the well-known movie star.

So when he told her he was having financial difficulties, claiming he needed a bridge loan until a movie paycheck cleared, she was more than happy to help out by sending cash his way. The woman made a series of payments that cost her hundreds of thousands of pounds. Of course, the person she was talking ...