A Scammer Posed as Ricky Gervais to Buy Gold

It’s not surprising that certain nefarious individuals would try to impersonate the rich and famous, like the time a Bradley Cooper lookalike conned his way into the Sundance Film Festival, and even performed a DJ set at a party before he was kicked out and presumably left to die in the bitter Park City cold. 

But one highly-publicized faux-celebrity scam involved a crook impersonating a more unlikely celebrity: Ricky Gervais. 

What was this guy hoping to steal by impersonating the star of The Office and Extras? Beer? A lifetime supply of surprisingly tight black T-shirts? The contempt of every Hollywood awards show audience? 

Back in 2003, an “East London bullion dealer” named Anthony Baird was contacted by a man claiming to be Gervais, who was looking to buy 60 pounds-worth of gold for a whopping £195,480. Which is weird, but probably not that weird considering most celebrity purchases. 

Incidentally, this was on April 1st, but “Gervais” proved that he was serious through phone conversations that took place “over the next six days.” 

Baird became suspicious, however, possibly because the buyer wasn’t constantly talking his ear off about atheism and/or cackling maniacally every 30 seconds. Apparently the gold dealer was “something of a fan” of Gervais’ and wasn’t totally convinced by the impression. “I would suggest that some of those involved were not fans of The Office, unlike Mr. Baird,” a police officer later testified. 

So the authorities were alerted and eventually nabbed the couriers who showed up to collect the gold. They then unraveled a plan that was equal parts clever and shockingly incompetent. 

It was revealed that the funds being used to purchase the gold actually did belong to Gervais. Two men were eventually convicted for the scheme, which required using an “unidentified bank insider to secretly transfer The Office star’s money to another account.” Diabolical. 

Less impressive: When the perpetrators were nabbed before the sale was completed, the cops confiscated the phony ID belonging to “Gervais,” and it wasn’t terribly convincing. Not-Ricky Gervais went to the trouble of altering a “dead pensioner’s passport” with Gervais’ info. But for the photo, they just grabbed an image of David Brent from the DVD box set of The Office. 

Did they really expect anyone would believe that Ricky Gervais had his passport photo taken in character? That’s like trying to steal Mike Myers’ identity using only a VHS copy of Austin Powers.

Gervais was, of course, notified of the theft, and later revealed in a podcast that he laughed for 10 minutes straight when he was shown the bogus passport. “All they did was cut out the picture on the first series of The Office DVD,” Gervais recalled. “So it’s a picture of David Brent sitting at a desk with that little smug look on his face.”

Well, it did reportedly fool at least one person — a lawyer who authorized a photocopy of the passport. Although he later said in a statement that “the man purporting to be Ricky Gervais did bear a true likeness to Ricky Dean Gervais,” adding, “The only difference was that the male in question was clean shaven.”

In retrospect, he probably should have asked the man to dance just to be sure.

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