Woman conned out of £500,000 by scammer posing as Gerard Butler on Facebook

Far from a Law Abiding Citizen

A woman has revealed how she was scammed by a man posing as actor Gerard Butler and went on to lose more than £500,000 of her own money. Appearing on Tuesday's episode of This Morning, Anne Larkin told presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby how she was approached by a man who claimed to be the Hollywood star over Facebook Messenger and proceeded to discuss plans for a humanitarian project. Larkin, a former police officer who had recently lost her partner, was told by the conman that he was building a compound for homeless children and families, which include a school, a hospital and homes for those living on the street. [caption id="attachment_340562" align="alignnone" width="1200"]

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She went on to explain how the fake scammer claimed "they were building houses, they were building a hospital, [and] they were other outbuildings being built", but had no suspicions when she was asked to donate large sums of money after having only interacted with this individual over social media.

Questioning how she was so quick to believe the fraudster was in fact the 52-year-old Scottish actor, Schofield asked, "Did he do it through a foundation?’ Did he say he had a charitable foundation?", to which she simply replied: "He just sent the plans of what was being built, how it was being built and were building funds to get it all built-in one go rather than sections". Larkin explained she then proceeded to send the impostor money, the largest single payment of which was £20,000. Unfortunately, this isn't the only time she fell victim to such a scheme, as she was later taken advantage of by another man named 'Clifton', who preyed on her recent loss and empathy by claiming he too had lost his partner as well as his daughter in a car crash. Moreover, it would seem that many people have been using the 300 star's identity as their alias when attempting to scam innocent people over the years - so much so that even the man himself had to an issue a warning back in 2017. https://twitter.com/GerardButler/status/1207428458130755585?s=20&t=BWvMrcnaIS15vesc34Nl2w