This Fake Astronaut Scam Isn't The Only Weird Fantasy Used As A Con

Most people probably consider themselves too smart, savvy, and world-wary to ever be victimized by a con artist or a scam. And yet there are so many blatant scams way too many people fall for, which suggests that humanity is by its nature trusting and willing to believe the tall tales and sob stories of strangers, a quality that scammers and criminals exploit to get others to willingly part with huge sums of money. The ability to execute scams via online methods and social media, because they can be done remotely and anonymously, is a tragic development of modern technology, especially considering just how many ridiculous internet scams and hoaxes have actually worked.

Con artists can get especially audacious. In 2025, a woman in Japan lost a fortune to a scammer who pretended to be an astronaut looking for a helping hand from the distant expanse of space. Here's that story along with far too many others who pretended to be very famous, influential, or special and singular people in order to coerce money out of gullible parties.

In July 2025, a woman in her 80s from Hokkaido, Japan, who wasn't named in news reports, was approached on a social media site by an individual she believed to be a male astronaut. After some messaging back and forth over the course of several weeks, the alleged astronaut informed the woman that while he was presently in space, he was also "under attack and in need of oxygen," a Japanese law enforcement authority told AFP (via CBS News).

The woman had fallen in love with the figure who said they were an astronaut, and so she readily, urgently, and electronically sent about 1 million yen, the equivalent of $6,700. The reason given: He desperately needed to buy oxygen. Astronauts have to follow a lot of rules on every mission, but paying for oxygen isn't among them. You won't be shocked to learn, the person who received the money was not actually a space traveler.

A person putting on the digital guise of a Russian astronaut as a way to swindle someone has happened more than once. In June 2022, a romantic relationship developed over Instagram — again — between a civilian woman in Japan and an alleged male astronaut. The latter appeared to be an astronaut, at least, as his feed was full of photos of space and the bio claimed employment at the International Space Station. The connection quickly blossomed into love through chats on the messaging app LINE, with the astronaut quick to say "I love you" and uttering other gushingly romantic sentiments before he proposed marriage. "I want to start my life in Japan," and "Saying this 1,000 times won't be enough, but I'll keep saying it. I love you," the party wrote, according to TV Asahi (via Vice).

The one thing preventing the relationship from proceeding, the astronaut said, was that he needed the unnamed 65-year-old Japanese woman to pay his landing and rocket fees. Those don't exist, but the victim didn't know that and paid the scam artist 4.4 million yen, around $30,000. After he kept asking for money, the woman realized she'd been conned and reported the incident to the police.

Dianne Ringstaff of Palmetto, Florida, was messing around on her phone one day in 2022 when she got a message from Keanu Reeves, Hollywood mega-star of "The Matrix" and "John Wick" franchises. Ringstaff was immediately skeptical that the person contacting her was really the actor. "Until he videoed me," she told Fox 13 News. "I couldn't believe it. It was him, but it was far away. But I thought it was him." Further persuading Ringstaff to believe and trust that the individual was Reeves was a series of audio messages.

For two and a half years, Ringstaff corresponded with not-really-Reeves, at which point the money requests began. The actor said his assets were inaccessible due to a lawsuit from an ex-manager and legal problems relating to a setup by the FBI. This Reeves needed tens of thousands of dollars urgently, but he needed it in the form of various cryptocurrencies. So, Ringstaff sold her car, got a home equity loan, and gave the $160,000 to whoever said they were Keanu Reeves. "Knowing what I know now and all the technology that's out there, can fake voices and everything else. It will never happen again," Ringstaff lamented.

A couple years ago, a woman who identified herself in media reports only as Anne, a 53-year-old interior designer from France, began an online romance with superstar actor Brad Pitt. The individual on the other end wasn't really Pitt, but he thoroughly convinced her that he was. After starting an Instagram account to post pics of a ski trip with her husband and children, Anne received a message purportedly from Pitt's mother, saying "her son needed someone like" the recipient, according to TF1's "Sept a Huit" (via Variety).

And then came the numerous photos of Pitt, and romantic notes and poems from Pitt, and the desperate entreaties from Pitt. The scammer asked for $1 million to pay for a kidney treatment, as he was unable to use his own substantial wealth because his assets were frozen amidst his contentious divorce from Angelina Jolie. At the end of the year-long saga, in which the faux-Pitt sent numerous heavily doctored hospital bed photos, Anne passed along about $850,000. She only realized she'd been conned when Pitt went public with his relationship with Ines de Ramos. "I'm not used to social media and I didn't really understand what was happening to me," Anne explained (via Page Six).

On December 24, 2024, a U.S.-based person, whose name wasn't released in news reports, opened an email that said it was from Steve Witkoff, one of the chairs of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee. It was a fundraising letter, seeking donations for the then-upcoming inauguration festivities commemorating the second term of President Donald Trump. According to WJLA, the subject donated $250,3000 worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. 

Within hours of the transaction, the funds had been shifted into other cryptocurrency accounts, and the donation was exposed as a scam. Based in Nigeria, the bilker had successfully masked their email address. At first glance, it looked like it was from a sender with the legitimate Inaugural Committee email address of @t47inaugural; the scam email had replaced the lower-case "i" with a lower-case "l" to make @t47lnaugral.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handled the matter and, in July 2025, announced that the FBI had tracked down and returned some of the funds, about $40,300 worth of cryptocurrency.