ForumGarden

A Balding 31-year old Frenchman nicknamed the Chameleon fooled social workers and fellow pupils into believing he was a teenage orphan and spent weeks at a college before he was unmasked.

Frederic Bourdin passed himself off as an imaginary 16-year old Spaniard, Francisco Hernandes-Fernandez. He is said to have previously assumed 39 other false identities.

This time he dyed his greying hair blond,meticulously shaved his beard, applied facial hair remover and covered his bald patch with a baseball cap to achieve the desired effect.

He was taken into care after a local resident believed his account that he had run away when both his parents were killed in a car crash. Bourdin spent a month in a children's home and secondary school in Pau,south-western France, without raising suspicions.

Classmates fell for the bespectacled Bourdin's perfect mastery of teenage gestures and streetwise slang, as well as his husky, pubescent voice. He was exposed last week by a teacher, who stumbled upon a TV programme telling his life story.

Bourdin is now in prison and faces trail in September for using false identities.

Before posing as a Spanish teenager Bourdin pretended to be a wealthy English tourist fallen on hard times.



www.dailytelegraph.co.uk

Capt, this has actually happened over here in England too, in that instance a 28 year old bloke went `back to school` so he could retake his A-levels. He didn`t look 28 but I thought he looked older than 16-18; oh, and he got caught, too!

john8pies wrote: Capt, this has actually happened over here in England too, in that instance a 28 year old bloke went `back to school` so he could retake his A-levels. He didn`t look 28 but I thought he looked older than 16-18; oh, and he got caught, too!Full marks for the old Bill

Any 31 year old who can pass himself off as a 16 year old, and fool so many people for weeks, deserves an award!