Romance scammers have used stolen photos of a Mississippi man to defraud victims of roughly $1.4 million, according to reports. Hunter Bigham, a sales executive and father of three in Tupelo, is not the scammer.
For more than eight years, fraudsters have used his pictures to build hundreds of fake profiles, often casting him as a widowed oil rig worker or geologist. The Associated Press found 177 Facebook accounts using his photos under the name Henry Clerk alone.
Victims tracked him down
Victims from the U.S., Spain, Venezuela and Hong Kong have tracked Bigham down. At the peak, up to 15 victims contacted him in a single day. Some have threatened him and his family.
One cancer survivor lost $75,000 to a scammer who claimed to be Bigham’s identical twin. She later wrote to him in a 2019 message: “Hunter, I fell in love. And I was a fool. You are now the only one who knows the extent of it. I am retired and have no way to replenish this money.”
Reports to Facebook and the FBI
Bigham says he reported the fake profiles to Facebook, but the platform repeatedly told him they did not violate its community standards. He also filed a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. The agency told him there was little it could do, he says.
Meta told the AP it removed four accounts he recently reported and is investigating his case. The company also said it removed over 179 million accounts, pages and groups for misrepresenting identity in the first half of 2026.
Bigham places the blame on the platforms. “I hold the most responsibility for the platforms. They could stop this today.”
