Fan sends €15,000 to scammer pretending to be Marseille’s president

According to BFM Marseille Provence, an Olympique de Marseille supporter has been scammed out of €15,000 after being tricked into believing he was talking to club president Pablo Longoria on Facebook. 

The supporter was catfished by a scammer who set up a fake profile for the president who then got in contact with the Marseille supporter and asked for help completing a financial transaction. The supporter would send the €15,000 to which the fake account would then promise to send him €80,000 in return for the help. 

It’s a common scam used across the internet to take advantage of the vulnerable, the promise of added returns if they just help this once. Often celebrities are unwittingly used as the face of these scams, and the para-social relationship that fans have with these idols is then manipulated. 

Marseille supporter still believes he was talking to the real Pablo Longoria 

“He broke my life. I told him, you broke up a family… I am going through a divorce, I have a lot of expenses to pay.” The Marseille supporter will be unlikely to ever recover the amount he sent but hopes that his insurance will help him recover some of it. 

Although the fan is now aware that he has been scammed he remains unconvinced that it was a fake Longoria profile. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the supporter believes that it was the real president who tricked him into sending the money. “Something that is not consistent is the number of subscribers: he has a few hundred subscribers.”

GFFN | Nick Hartland