An elderly retiree from Brittany thought she was having a private conversation with her favorite presenter, fell in love, and then saved him from a serious illness. However, behind the screen, it was not actually Frédéric Lopez, but a seasoned scammer known as a “brouteur”. This story was revealed in a report on TF1, highlighting the mix of emotions, loneliness, and digital cunning that trapped this elderly woman.
In “Abus de faiblesse: le prix de la confiance,” viewers discovered the journey of Marie-Paule, an 82-year-old woman living in isolation near Morlaix. Very active on social media, she lost a total of 65,000 euros, first to a fake American doctor and then to someone pretending to be the host of “Un dimanche à la campagne”. The host eventually decided to speak to her directly.
Before being contacted by the fake profile of the host, Marie-Paule had been communicating for several years with “Michael” or “Mickael Williams,” a supposed widowed surgeon living in Boston. Over time, she had sent him around 60,000 euros. The arrival of a second interlocutor, pretending to be the real Frédéric Lopez, strengthened her feeling of finally being loved and recognized.
The fake host told her he was suffering from lung cancer and needed money. Touched by this confession, the retiree explained, “When he told me he had lung cancer… My brother died of lung cancer,” as shown in the TF1 report. She then sent him 5,000 euros. Convinced she was living two parallel romances, she asserted, “Both Michael and Frédéric want to marry me”.
To help her realize the deception, the documentary team contacted the real host. In a video specially recorded for her, he first reassured her about his health and then dispelled any doubts about money. “I am not sick, I am doing very well. I did not ask you for money. I will not ask you or anyone else for money,” he assured on camera.
Upon discovering this message, Marie-Paule realized she had been manipulated for years by several individuals. Despite the loss of money, she does not intend to file a complaint. She now lives under guardianship and consults a psychologist to work on her relationship with loneliness, social media, and virtual interactions that had taken a central place in her daily life.
The case of Marie-Paule is not unique. Another elderly woman, Marie Josée, in her nineties, was also seduced by a scammer pretending to be the host before going to join him in Ivory Coast, causing distress in her family who denounced a “romance scam”. In this case, identity theft resulted in nearly 100,000 euros in losses. Faced with a series of such incidents, Frédéric Lopez had already warned that he would “NEVER ask for money for anything”. Abroad, a fifty-year-old woman named Anne was also deceived by a fake Brad Pitt, a testimony broadcast in “Sept à Huit”. Scammers now exploit artificial intelligence to create even more credible fake profiles.
These methods are part of a broader wave of online scams: in 2023, scams affected more than 400,000 people in France, with an annual increase of 7.3% since 2016, according to the Ministry of the Interior. To limit the risks of “romance scam”, certain signals should alert individuals:
– A celebrity or a stranger who quickly declares love and talks about marriage. – Requests for money for a serious illness, accident, or complicated travel. – A profile that refuses video calls and never suggests a real meeting. – An unverified account that does not link back to the individual’s official channels.
