Dean Barrage Supposed Hollywood Stunt Man and Internet Dating Scammer Fake actor posing as internet dater scams 3 women and 7 men in california Los Angeles Internet

My “love affair” began with the sort of dodgy Facebook message that most people delete on sight. A man named Dean Barlage who claimed to be an actor and a stunt man living in LA contacted me around January 2015.

I first discovered his message in February 2015 while cleaning out my junk and “Other” mailbox on Facebook. This message caught my eye because of the handsome profile photo, which showed a young man with a nice face, strong eyebrows and a welcoming gaze. His name was Dean Barlage.

“Audrey, sorry to contact you but I have something to tell you” the message read. “My name is Dean, I am from Belgium and I live in Los Angeles. I am an actor and stunt man and your friend (I won’t share her name) owes me money. I have a son named Kevin and I hope I can meet him again.”

A typical Facebook user would likely recognize such a note as bait, but I was in a bad place in my life. I was in the midst of divorcing my husband of 1 year after he cheated on me.

I wrote back, thanking the sender for sharing such information and for complementing my beauty and asking how he’d found her. He said he had stumbled across my profile while searching for a friend who owed him money. After a bit more flirtatious back-and-forth on Facebook, I invited him to continue the conversation on Skype. 

We were soon chatting online for more than 12 hours a day. Dean often talked about the agony of losing his son and wife, “Susan”, who he said had died in a car accident in San Francisco in 2009. But he’d refused to let that tragedy destroy his joie de vivre, as evidenced by the many photographs he shared with me: When he wasn’t working on set, he enjoyed reading classic novels, playing music or traveling. 

Dean Barlage was also a tremendous listener who never hesitated to lend me a sympathetic ear. He wasn’t like the little boys I was used to dealing with—he was the opposite of that, so sincere, so caring. 

It wasn’t always about him, it was about me, about everyday stuff in my life. Within weeks of our initial Facebook encounter, I was telling Dean my most intimate secrets; he, in turn, was emailing me lists with titles like “100 Things We’ll Do Together Before We Die.” By the end of February 2015 we were discussing marriage.

One day in March 2015 I received an appeal for aid. Dean was “on set” in Morocco and his bank froze his account while he was at work. I offered to send him some money after he made me feel like I didn’t trust him enough. I had never met him and I felt the need to help him.

We continued our “relationship” and eventually I found myself sending him three quarters of my pay every week. He even convinced me to sell my car and send him the money for a ticket home where I was supposed to meet him at the airport. He never showed up.

I sent him $25,000 in cash, I lost my car and had to sell my house to pay for the bank loans I took.

Beware of this fraudster. He uses many different accounts. I wasn’t his first victim … or the last one.