Con man tried to assume the identities of missing teens from three different countries for a heartbreaking reason
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: JEAN-LOUIS DUZERT/AFP via Getty Images/YouTube/Graveyard Shift
Con man Frédéric Bourdin has built up a reputation over the years for his bizarre antics, gaining the nickname ‘The Chameleon’.
From a lecturer and a tiger healer to a businessman and an affluent English tourist, the Frenchman has certainly earned this moniker due to his dedication to passing off himself as a whole host of identities.
His deceptions have been well-thought out and blindsiding, settling in multiple locations in Europe and the US.
At one point, while in his 30s, the serial imposter fooled social workers and pupils into thinking he was a teenage orphan and spent weeks at school before he was unmasked.
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"He was an impostor, for sure, but what a marvellous actor," said Claire Chadourne, headmistress of the school the con man had been going to.
"He seemed a little older than his classmates, two or three years at the most. But 31, I still can't believe it!"
However, he drew criticism and ire of authorities after claiming to be the missing son of a Texan couple.
For months, the mom thought that then-23-year-old brown-eyed Bourdin was her blue-eyed son, Nicholas Barclay, who disappeared in 1994.
In 1997 Bourdin was ultimately sentenced to six years in jail in the US after pleading guilty to passport fraud and perjury.
After being released in 2003 he appeared in Grenoble, in the south-eastern Alps, claiming to be Léo Balley - a French boy who disappeared in 1996.
However, a DNA test disproved Bourdin's accounts.
In 2004, he was deported from Spain after police out found he was claiming to be Ruben Sanchez Espinosa - a teen who reportedly lost his mother in the Madrid train bombings.
Seemingly unaware of the pain his claims have inflicted on other people, Bourdin has defended his actions.
When quizzed on them, he said: “I have only usurped the identities of two disappeared children. Otherwise, 99 percent of the names are completely made up."
Bourdin has even appeared on TV shows to speak about his antics, claiming they have been a way of receiving the attention he never had as a child. He said he never knew his dad and was abandoned by his mom.
Bourdin admitted: “I want to be loved, quite simply. I will stop at nothing to be listened to, to have people look after me.”
He has since allegedly vowed to 'never impersonate anyone again'.