Woman catfished by fake Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery divorced husband, sent impostor $10k
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A single mom claims her life was turned upside down after she was catfished by a scammer claiming to be Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery.
McKayla of Kentucky revealed that she left her husband for "Montgomery" after the two met on an online forum for creatives, adding that she even sent the scammer roughly $10,000. The two "hit it off, but of course I'm suspicious from the get go until he starts doing things that make me believe that he is who he is," she told Catfished, a YouTube series.
She said "Montgomery," who plays Billy Hargrove on the Netflix hit, told her that he and his model girlfriend Liv Pollock were on the verge of a split due to Pollock's controlling behavior. McKayla, who was in an unhappy marriage with a "toxic" partner, said she empathized "because my ex-husband was that way." As "Montgomery," the scammer informed her that Pollock controlled his bank accounts, prompting her to fund his life for over a year.
The single mom said she became convinced the scammer was Montgomery after they told her to tune into Stranger Things season 4, specifically the "Dear Billy" episode that saw the return of the character, the night before the episodes debuted. "And he showed up in that episode," McKayla recalled. "I was like, well, who else would know that?" The scammer would also send her poems that mirrored the writing style in Montgomery's DKMH: Poems, a 2020 poetry collection.
"If you're someone like me, you're afraid of abandonment and you're a real big people pleaser and you're very co-dependent," McKayla said. "These scammers, they just kind of come in and they leech off that."
Reps for Montgomery did not immediately return EW's request for comment.
Netflix Dacre Montgomery on 'Stranger Things'
Split into two volumes, season 4 of the sci-fi series introduces an otherworldly being called Vecna (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) that wreaks havoc on the town of Hawkins. Elsewhere, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) works to regain her powers while Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Murray (Brett Gelman) travel to Russia in search of Hopper (David Harbour). A release date for the fifth and final season has yet to be announced.
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