Russian Woman Duped Out Of $14,700 After Believing Chris Hemsworth Had Fallen In Love With Her
A Serbian woman caught in a lonely marriage thought she was finding comfort in the arms of a famous actor, and was conned into sending money for a meeting with him.
As reported by the Serbian Times, the unnamed woman from Irkutsk explained that she and her husband had been going through a difficult patch in their marriage when she suddenly received an unsolicited message over social media from someone claiming to be Chris Hemsworth.
According to the woman, the message read, “Hey, I am Chris Hemsworth, I am a famous actor from Australia, I live in California. You are so pretty, can we chat?”
While she said she was not particularly a fan of the Australian actor, the 42-year-old said she did find him attractive. After looking him up online, she discovered that Hemsworth is married, and has three children with his wife, Spanish actress and model Elsa Pataky. Thinking perhaps he was also caught in an unhappy marriage and that they would have something in common, she responded.
Two months after they started talking, the person pretending to be Hemsworth said he wanted her to come to Australia to meet him, but later said he would come to Russia to meet her there. It was at that point that he asked her to send him money.
Fraudsters posing as Chris Hemsworth convince Russian lonely woman, 42, Hollywood heartthrob has fallen in love with her in £11.5k romance scam https://t.co/2uVi1eetzT
— Red1 ?? (@Reda_ZeOfficial) November 28, 2018
She was contacted by someone pretending to be the actor’s legal counsel, letting her know that Hemsworth had been suffering through “temporary financial difficulties” and that she would need to fund his flights to meet her.
“He needed money to pay for visa, insurance and parking for his private jet in Siberia. The lawyer asked her to transfer money and sent her Chris’s driving license as a guarantee of a payback.”
To her, it seemed genuine, so she took out a loan of almost 1 million rubles, just shy of $15,000. As soon as she had paid the money, all of his social media accounts suddenly disappeared. Police are set to open a criminal case over the scam, and issued a warning for others not to fall for this.
“We urge everyone not to stay in contact with strangers and not to send anything to people you are not familiar with,” they said.
Hemsworth is among the best paid actors in the world, and, regardless of the unlikelihood of him flying halfway around the world to meet a perfect stranger, wouldn’t need anyone else’s bank account to foot the bill of flights and visas.
