Frédéric Bourdin
| Frédéric Bourdin | |
|---|---|
Bourdin in 2008
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| Born |
13 June 1974 Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, France |
| Residence | Le Mans, France |
| Occupation | Serial impostor (1990-2007) |
| Spouse(s) | Isabelle (m. 2007) |
| Children | 4 |
Frédéric Pierre Bourdin (born 13 June 1974) is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "The Chameleon". He began his impersonations as a child and claims to have assumed at least 500 false identities, three of which have been actual teenage missing persons.
Bourdin was born in Nanterre and raised by his grandparents in Nantes until he ran away and eventually went to Paris. He never knew his father, whom his mother stated was a married Algerian immigrant named Kaci.
Nicholas Barclay, aged 13 at the time, was playing basketball with his friends in his home town of San Antonio, Texas, on 13 June 1994. Barclay never made it home and has not been seen or heard from since. In 1997 Bourdin took Barclay's identity and was flown to the United States. Although Bourdin had brown eyes and a French accent, he convinced the family he was their blue-eyed son, saying he had escaped from a child prostitution ring and the ring had altered his eye color. Bourdin lived with the family for almost five months until 6 March 1998.
In late 1997 a local private investigator grew suspicious while he was working with a TV crew that had been filming the family. The investigator compared a photo of Bourdin's ears to Nicholas' ears and discovered that they did not match. In February 1998 the FBI obtained a court order to take the young man's fingerprints and DNA, which were later identified as belonging to Bourdin. In September 1998 Bourdin pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury in a San Antonio federal court. He was imprisoned for six years, more than twice as long as recommended by the sentencing guidelines.
When Bourdin returned to France from the U.S. in 2003, he moved to Grenoble and assumed the identity of Léo Balley, a 14-year-old French boy who had been missing since 1996; DNA testing proved he was not Balley.
In August 2004 he was in Spain, claiming to be an adolescent named Ruben Sanchez Espinoza whose mother had been killed in the Madrid bomb attacks. When the police found out the truth, they deported him to France.
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Wikipedia