A Facebook page dedicated to the English actor and film producer contacted a British woman who eventually sent the fraudster hundreds of thousands of pounds.
According to the victim, an online user posing as Statham flirted with her and sent her numerous love messages. She admitted she was star-struck and in a vulnerable place at the time, after the death of her mother and fiancée.
"I don't feel like I was in the right place myself because of what I'd been through," she said.
Reacting to the story, social media users largely failed to show sympathy with the fraud victim.
— Tim Jones (@t_rjones) April 29, 2019
— Kevin Barrett (@KarbonKev63) April 29, 2019
— FluffybumTheCat (@FluffybumCat) April 29, 2019
Some even suggested the case could be used to write a script for a movie "Jason Statham chasing down the fraud Jason Statham."
The UK Office of National Statistics has reported on 25 April an estimated 3.6 million incidents of fraud for the year ending December 2018. However, many cases go unreported by fraud victims, affecting the official data on the volume of fraud offences.
