Frederic Bourdin (born 1974) is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "the chameleon". An impostor is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but just as often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement. ...

According to himself, his lawyer and the press reports, Bourdin was raised by his grandparents in Paris and was later put into a children's home. He says that he never knew his father, that his mother intended to have an abortion and eventually abandoned him and that he was sexually abused. How reliable the information is compared to his other claims is unknown. He began his impostures as soon as he left the children's home and as of 2005 had assumed at least 39 false identities, three of which have been actual teenage missing persons. 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A missing person is a person who has disappeared for no known reason. ...

In 1997 Bourdin took the identity of Nicholas Barclay, a lost son of a family in San Antonio, Texas. He invited his would-be-parents to the US embassy in Spain to meet him. Even though Bourdin had brown eyes and a French accent, he convinced the family that he was their blue-eyed son who had disappeared three years previously. He said that he had escaped from a child prostitution ring. Nickname: Location in the state of Texas Coordinates: , Counties Bexar County Government  - Mayor Phil Hardberger Area  - City  412. ... The Optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography to the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the prostitution of children or child prostitution is the practice whereby a child is used by others for sexual activities in return for remuneration or any...

Bourdin lived with the family for three months before a local journalist exposed him and his real identity was confirmed by a DNA test. He was imprisoned for 6 years. Genetic fingerprinting or DNA testing is a technique to distinguish between individuals of the same species using only samples of their DNA. Its invention by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester was announced in 1985. ...

When Bourdin returned from the USA in 2003, he moved to Grenoble, assumed the name Leo Balley and claimed that he was a teenager who had been missing since 1996. DNA test proved otherwise. Grenoble (Arpitan: Grasanòbol) is a city and commune in south-east France, situated at the foot of the Alps, at the confluence of the Drac into the Isère River. ...

In August 2004 he was in Spain, claiming to be adolescent Ruben Sanchez Espinoza and said that his mother had been killed in the Madrid bomb attacks. When the police found out the truth, they deported him to France. The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known as 11-M, 3/11, 11/3 and M-11) were a series of coordinated bombings against the commuter train system of Madrid, Spain on the morning of 11 March 2004, which killed 191 people and wounded over 1700. ...

In June 2005 Bourdin passed himself off as Francisco Hernandes-Fernandez, a 15-year-old Spanish orphan and spent a month in the College Jean Monnet in Pau, France. He claimed that his parents had been killed in a car accident. He dressed as a teenager, adopted a proper walking style, covered his bald patch with a baseball cap and used depilatory face creams. In June 12 a teacher unmasked him after he saw a TV program about his exploits. On September 16 he was sentenced to four months in prison for possessing and using the previous false identity of Leo Balley. Orphans, by Thomas Kennington An orphan (from the Greek ορφανός) is a person (typically a child), who has lost both parents, often through death. ... Pau is a town of southwestern France, préfecture (capital) of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

According to his 2005 interviews, Bourdin has been looking for "love and affection" and attention he never received as a child. He has pretended to be a businessman, a college lecturer, a tiger healer, a wealthy British tourist and several times an orphan. He has also appeared in French and American TV shows but has continued his impostures.

External links/References

• BBC - France Holds Chameleon impostor
• Telegraph - "Chameleon" Caught pretending to be a boy
• Hindu - After brilliant success, impostor finally unmasked