Nigerian scammer uses AI to pose as celebrity rockstar, defrauds 55-year-old American woman of $10,000

The impersonator used AI-generated videos and eventually persuaded her to pay for a supposed meet-and-greet and security clearance.

A documentary team’s investigation traced the scam account’s IP address to a house in Lagos, although no suspect has been identified or arrested.

A 55-year-old woman in the United States says she lost more than $10,000 to a scammer who used artificial intelligence to pose as rock star Jon Bon Jovi in a 10-month online romance that a documentary team later traced to Lagos, Nigeria.

Leslie Pickett, a mortgage lender from North Louisiana who has been a Bon Jovi fan since she was 14, shared her story in an interview with Business Insider and in the National Geographic special “Super Scam Me,” which was released on October 17, 2026.

The contact began in late 2024, when Pickett commented on a post on Bon Jovi’s verified Instagram page. Within minutes, she received a message from an unverified account using the singer’s image, according to Fox News.

For about seven months, the impostor did not ask for money, according to the documentary’s host, journalist Mariana van Zeller. The requests began after a sold-out Bon Jovi concert in Nashville, Pickett said. She was told she was paying for a meet-and-greet and later for "security clearance."

During one video call, she tried to enlarge the picture and the man hung up, Pickett said. He later texted that it was a security breach because his people thought she was trying to record the call to blackmail him. A larger bitcoin payment was demanded after a supposed security violation prevented them from meeting.

Pickett said she went to the police, who helped her calculate that she had lost $10,000. She said she fell behind on bills and that her home came close to foreclosure.

She then contacted van Zeller, whose team worked with a former hacker to set a trap that led the scammer to ask for more bitcoin and revealed his IP address. The address traced to a house in Lagos, Nigeria, which the team confirmed using Google Earth. No suspect has been named or arrested, however.

The case comes as Nigerian authorities pursue online fraud. The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre said on October 24 that it arrested three suspects in Lekki, Lagos, on October 14 over alleged celebrity impersonation, following intelligence from the UK’s National Crime Agency. Police said one suspect allegedly used AI voice cloning and deepfake technology.

In January, Airport Police arrested a 20-year-old, Essien Emmanuel Akpama, over an alleged celebrity scam that defrauded victims in the US of more than ₦1 billion.

Pickett now advocates for scam victims and has urged people to be wary of unverified accounts claiming to be celebrities.