A SoCal woman thought she was being courted online by Keanu Reeves until a request for money was made from the millionaire movie star.
“To this day, this morning, I received — yesterday and today — eight texts from this Keanu Reeves guy … I have emails and chats and texts and pictures and stuff that, I dare any girl to read these and not believe it’s true. They go right to your heart,” said Playa del Rey resident Pamela Landers.
Landers wasn’t really being wooed by one of the world’s biggest movie stars. She was a victim of what are known as imposter or impersonation scams.
The Keanu Reeves scam is a relatively recent version of this racket — and one so effective, victims have reported being conned by it both nationwide and around the world.
“Impersonation scams come in a number of varieties, whether that’s government impersonation or business impersonation, relative impersonation or online love interest, otherwise known as romance scams,” said Christopher Brown, an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 150,000 romance scams have been reported to the FTC — likely just a fraction of the total. Many, if not most victims, are too embarrassed to report having been duped.
“A scammer pretends to be someone that you trust in order to convince you to send them money or your personal information,” Brown said.
That’s how it worked with Landers, who says Fake Keanu spent…
