The ‘Unknown Man’ Who Refused To Admit His Identity For Years

A man simply known as the Unknown Man served nearly a decade in prison before his identity was finally revealed.

It all started on 20 September 2006, when the Unknown Man was arrested at a homeless shelter in Toronto, Canada.

He had about $10 of crack cocaine on him, so was looking at a minor drug offence – that is, until police realised he wasn't a Canadian citizen.

Police Handout

In fact, the man's passport suggested he was an American citizen, by the name of Andrea Walker.

Also, his year of birth was listed at 1973, which at the time would've put the man in his early 30s, when police said he looked much older.

So, US officials interrogated the man while he was in custody and determined that he was a 'noncitizen' – this basically means the US isn't accepting him as a national and he's not allowed in without a visa.

This is where Canadian authorities got stuck; they wanted to deport the unknown man but didn't have a country to deport him to, and he wasn't telling anyone his identity.

Gregory Holmgren/Alamy Stock Photo

So, he would stay in custody until 2015.

During this time, his fingerprints were sent to Interpol, which found eight other identities linked to the individual in custody, National Post reports.

One such identity, Michael Mvogo, seemed to shed a little light on who the unknown man was. According to records, Michael Mvogo was born on 1 September 1959 and was arrested for several offences, including drug trafficking, resisting arrest, and public mischief in Spain.

When questioned by authorities, the man would confirm that this was his identity.

However, when officials tried to cross-check this identity with Cameroonian records, they drew a blank.

Jake Lyell/Alamy Stock Photo

Records in Cameroon couldn't fully confirm the man's identity, and it wasn't until March 2015 that Canada's border service agency went to investigate, finding a birth certificate in a village in rural Cameroon that matched his story.

The liaison officer also found an uncle who would confirm the man previously known as the unknown man's identity.

The report noted that: "Three days of research in rural Cameroon led to the discovery of the birth certificate needed to prove the identity/Cameroonian citizenship of a long-term detention removal case."

Following the discovery of this information, he was deported, and the strange, years-long case of the unknown man who eventually came to be known as Michael was put to rest

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