For more than eight years, Hunter Bigham has woken up most mornings in Tupelo, Mississippi, to messages from strangers who believe he loves them. He has never met them. Romance scammers have been stealing his photos to build hundreds of fake online profiles, and when the schemes collapse, the real victims often come looking for the real man behind the picture.
According to the Winnipeg Free Press, which drew on Associated Press reporting by David Goldman and Kristen Gelineau, scammers have cast Bigham as a widowed petroleum geologist in Houston, an oil rig worker in Scotland, and a Spanish secret agent named John. The Associated Press found 177 Facebook accounts alone using his photos as profile pictures, the outlet reports. Bigham, a sales executive for a furniture manufacturer who lives with his husband, Johnny, and their three children, says he checks messages each morning from bed because the volume never really stops.
The losses add up fast. Victims who have contacted Bigham directly report losses totaling roughly $1.4 million, per the same account, and at the peak of the scheme, as many as 15 victims a day reached out to him in a single stretch. One victim from Switzerland was so desperate to confirm he was real that she flew to France to try to see him in person, the report states.
Pleas to Platforms and the FBI Go Nowhere
Bigham has tried to fight back through the usual channels, with little to show for it. His requests to internet platforms asking them to remove the fake profiles have been largely rejected, and his complaints to the FBI have gotten him nowhere, the Winnipeg Free Press reports. He is not alone in that frustration — the outlet notes that Bryan Denny, another man whose image has been hijacked by scammers, says his group has reported more than 3,000 fraudulent profiles bearing his likeness to Facebook.
Some of the fallout has turned personal and frightening. The same reporting states that some victims, confused or enraged after realizing they'd been deceived, have threatened Bigham, his family, and themselves. Still, he says he responds to every victim who contacts him, telling them they are worthy of love even though the romance they believed in never existed.
A Scam That Found an Unlikely Spokesman
Bigham has said he understands, on some level, the vulnerability the scammers exploit — the feeling of believing you'll never find love, and the lengths people will go to protect it once they think they have. He has described the experience of effectively vanishing from public view, swallowed up by a persona scammers built from his face, as feeling like being forced back into the closet.
Even amid the chaos, pieces of an ordinary life persist: Bigham has attended a Mississippi State football game with thousands of other fans, and he promotes a side hustle in the adult entertainment industry alongside his day job. The scale of what he's dealing with reflects a much larger problem. An AP-NORC Center poll cited in the same report found that 98% of Americans suspect they have been targeted with scam messages, and the Federal Trade Commission has said nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform.
