Frédéric Bourdin
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Frédéric Bourdin (born June 13, 1974)[1] is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "The Chameleon".[2] He began his impersonations as a child and claims to have assumed at least 500 false identities,[3] three of which have been actual teenage missing persons.[2][4]
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Early life [edit]
Bourdin was born in Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine and raised by his grandparents in Nantes, France, until running away and eventually travelling to Paris. He says that he never knew his father, who his mother has stated was a married Algerian immigrant named Kaci.[5]
Impersonations [edit]
In 1997 Bourdin took the identity of Nicholas Barclay, a lost son of a family in San Antonio, Texas. Nicholas, who was thirteen, was playing basketball with his friends in San Antonio on June 13, 1994. Nicholas never made it home and had not been seen or heard from since. Bourdin was flown to the United States, and although Bourdin had brown eyes and a French accent, he convinced the family he was their blue-eyed son. He said he had escaped from a child prostitution ring.[5]
Bourdin lived with the family for almost 5 months until March 6, 1998. In late 1997 a local private investigator grew suspicious while he was working with a TV crew that had been filming the family. In February 1998 the FBI got a court order to take the young man's fingerprints and DNA, which were later identified as belonging to Bourdin. In September 1998 in federal court in San Antonio, Bourdin pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury. He was imprisoned for six years, more than twice as long as recommended by the sentencing guidelines.[6]
When Bourdin returned from the United States 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 otherwise.[5]
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.[2]
In June 2005 Bourdin passed himself off as Francisco Hernandes-Fernandez, a 15-year-old Spanish orphan, and spent a month in the College Jean Monnet in Pau, France. He claimed that his parents had been killed in a car accident. He dressed as a teenager, adopted a proper walking style, covered his receding hairline with a baseball cap and used depilatory face creams. On June 12 a teacher unmasked him after seeing a TV program about his exploits. On September 16 he was sentenced to four months in prison for possessing and using the previous false identity of Léo Balley.[5]
According to interviews, Bourdin has been looking for "love and affection" and attention he never received as a child. He has pretended to be an orphan several times.[2]
Personal life [edit]
On August 8, 2007, Bourdin married a French woman named Isabelle after a yearlong courtship.[5] They are the parents of three children.[1] According to the The Daily Mirror Bourdin claimed that he would "never impersonate anyone again."[7]
Bourdin was interviewed in 2008 by David Grann, a columnist for The New Yorker. After Isabelle gave birth to their first child, Bourdin contacted Grann and told him it was a girl. Grann then asked if Bourdin had become a new person now that he was a father and a husband, to which Bourdin replied, "No, this is who I am."[6]
Depictions in the media [edit]
In 2010, a fictionalized account of the Nicholas Barclay case was brought to theaters under the title The Chameleon, by French director and screenwriter Jean-Paul Salomé. Bourdin – renamed Fortin in the film – was portrayed by Canadian actor Marc-André Grondin. The film was adapted from Le Caméléon, Christophe D'Antonio's authorized biography of Bourdin.[8] The film premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.[9]
The Imposter, a documentary about Bourdin's impersonation of Nicholas Barclay, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012.[10]
References [edit]
- ^ a b Mick Brown, "The Imposter: interview with the Chameleon," The Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2012.
- ^ a b c d Samuel, Henry (June 13, 2005). "'Chameleon' caught pretending to be boy". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
- ^ Laura Plitt, producer, "Frederic Bourdin – the man who changed his identity 500 times," BBC News, October 19, 2012.
- ^ "France holds 'Chameleon' impostor". BBC. June 13, 2005. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e David Grann, "The Chameleon: The many lives of Frédéric Bourdin," The New Yorker, August 11, 2008.
- ^ a b David Grann (27 September 2008). "The great pretender: David Grann meets Frederic Bourdin, the man who pretended to be missing teenager". The Observer. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
- ^ Roper, Matt (30 June 2012). "The elaborate imposter: Conman, 30, fools family into thinking he is their missing teenage son". The Mirror. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ^ Stephen Holden, "A 'Who Is It?' More Than a Whodunit," New York Times, July 14, 2011.
- ^ Nathaniel Rogers, "Q&A: The Chameleon," tribecafilm.com, April 24, 2010.
- ^ David Rooney, "The Imposter: Sundance Film Review," The Hollywood Reporter, January 26, 2012.
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