Through messages of love and promises of marriage, an American woman is scammed for more than two years, believing she is in a relationship with actor Martin Henderson.

For over 2 years, an American woman in her forties who called herself Léa so as not to reveal her true identity thought she was in a romantic relationship with the New Zealand actor from the series Virgin River , Martin Henderson . However, all this was false, he was in reality a  scammer who extorted over 375,000 dollars (or 363,131 euros) from her .

The story begins after the woman wrote a comment on a Virgin River fan page  : “I left a comment and got a message from his agent saying Martin liked my comments and would like to send me a message . […] We hit it off straight away and talked about our favourite foods and common interests ,” she told the New Zealand Herald .

Sweet words to get money from him more easily

During these long months of exchange, Léa tells him about the trauma she experienced following her father’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, her mother’s stroke and her divorce after an 11-year relationship. Faced with her confidences, “Martin” sends her voice messages telling her that he loves her and promising that they will soon be together. Of course, it is still not the actor, his voice has been modified by an AI.

In addition to these sweet little words to make the forty-year-old stay, the man plays on the victim’s pity and feelings and obviously asks for money, just like during the scam suffered by Anne, a French woman who believed she was in a relationship with Brad Pitt, when in fact it was a scammer who managed to get the colossal sum of 830,000 euros from her .

The fake actor then tells her that he “wants to leave the world of cinema and live a quiet life in New Zealand with me. We had planned to get married and have three children.” Léa, who does not see what is really going on, then has no doubts when he asks her for money.

Thousands of dollars sent to “Martin”

So she wires him $30,000 for a private jet out of South Africa before being told that her partner had been jailed for breaking his contract. But that’s not all, she also gives him $10,000 to get him out of jail, €5,000 to fly commercially, $12,000 for gift cards, she also buys 25 MacBooks for the creation of a “new business” and makes bitcoin transfers at $5,000 each.

A few months before discovering the truth, Lea paid for a box to be shipped from New Zealand to China, where she worked. The box was supposed to contain: employment contracts, a diamond ring, Rolex watches, $148,000 in cash, and a biography of the actor’s life that was to be sent to Netflix. She paid nearly $56,000 for this box that didn’t actually exist.

These large transfers did not fail to provoke a reaction from Léa’s bank, which called on fraud specialists, who reported certain transfers as being “money laundering”.

He wasn’t in a hospital bed after all.

The manipulation finally came to an end last December when a friend of the woman sent her a newspaper article that said Martin Henderson was taking part in a bike rally. The pieces of the puzzle then came together in Lea’s mind: “I thought, ‘What is Martin doing in New Zealand in Matakana on a bike rally?’ when he told me he was lying in a hospital bed in Johannesburg after a mild heart attack,” she added.

The American had moved to New Zealand in December, thinking she would start a family with the actor.

She was supposed to pick him up at Auckland airport on January 31, but he texted her that he had been rushed to hospital in South Africa. The next day, she found the article showing him riding his bike in great shape. The woman said she had been “severely manipulated during some very traumatic events in my life.”