Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Lydia Abdelmalek from Melbourne Australia catfished 2 other women by pretending to be famous soap opera actor Lincoln Lewis

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She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and she apparently lives with her parents and doesn't have a lot going on. So one day, I guess she gets bored and decides, I'm going to go catfish some people. Might be fun. So she makes a new Facebook profile. Of course, she doesn't use her own name. Instead, she uses the name of this famous Australian soap opera actor,

this guy, Lincoln Lewis. And she makes this page look really authentic and she starts pretending to be fake Lincoln Lewis. Now at some point, Lydia, as fake Lincoln, sends a friend request to this random woman. Now, we don't know her real name, but we'll just call her Betty. And Betty, she's a nice woman, she's a flight attendant, and by some crazy coincidence, she actually knew the real Lincoln Lewis,

like they grew up in the same area as kids or something. Now, they don't really talk now, now that he's famous, but they used to know each other. So, of course, Betty accepts the request from this famous guy she knew as a kid, and they start messaging back and forth, sending photos, and Betty has no idea that the person she's talking to is just Lydia catfishing her. And over time, their conversations get more flirty, and they're sending adult photos of themselves to each other.

Now, I don't know how Lydia faked nude photos of Lincoln Lewis, like out of Photoshop, I don't know, but somehow she did. And soon enough, Betty is in a full-blown romantic relationship with fake Lincoln Lewis. And so naturally, of course, at some point, Betty wants to meet up. with Lincoln like hey when can we meet IRL so they make plans to meet up but every time they're about to meet fake Lincoln cancels at the last minute and it keeps happening again and again and again and after it happens enough times Betty starts getting suspicious like is my boyfriend really Lincoln Lewis now remember Betty and Lincoln grew up in the same area as kids and they

used to know each other and in fact they actually still have a mutual friend in common So Betty reaches out to their mutual friend and gets the real Lincoln Lewis's phone number, and she calls him. And the real Lincoln Lewis picks up and Betty's like, Hey, have we been dating each other for the last few months? And the real Lincoln is like, noar. And so Betty explains to him what's been going on, that someone friended her on Facebook pretending to be him and that now they are in a relationship.

And real Lincoln is like, what the fuck? And he gets so mad that he goes and tweets about it. It has come to my attention that weird people have made Facebook profiles impersonating me and causing a lot of drama. Just deleted Facebook. Hope this stops. And Betty is also mad and she goes and reports Fake Lincoln, aka Lydia, to the police. But unfortunately, police, they don't really do anything.

They're like, eh, you got catfished. What do you want us to do? Meanwhile, Lydia knows Betty no longer believes her. But she isn't going to give up. She seems to enjoy catfishing, and she's He doesn't plan on stopping. So she contacts Betty and tells her another big lie. She's like, okay, I'm not really Lincoln Lewis.

My name is actually Michael. So now Lydia is pretending to be fake Michael. And fake Michael starts bullshit Betty and he tells her that he made the fake Lincoln Lewis profile only as a joke like he was just goofing around. And the worst part about this is that Betty believes him. She's still mad at him, but she continues to talk to him. Like, she must be really lonely. Because soon enough, they're talking all the time again, like every day.

And eventually, Betty falls in love with fake Michael. And they end up in a full-blown romantic relationship. Now, here's where it gets really weird, as if it's not already weird. For some reason, now, not only is Lydia pretending to be fake Michael, aka Betty's boyfriend, but she will also pretend to be other anonymous people. And when she pretends to be other anonymous people, she'll send threatening DMs to Betty and threatening text messages, like lots of messages, sometimes up to 80 a day.

Like, I'm gonna unalive you or whatever. Like, what the hell is she doing? And one time, Lydia, pretending to be fake Michael, goes as far as to stage a kidnapping. Like one day fake Michael starts sending Betty texts, claiming that he's being hurt, And then an unknown number sends her messages threatening her, demanding Michael's contact info. And then, bam, Betty gets another text from a supposed federal agent.

And this fake federal agent sends her a photo of fake Michael bound and gagged like he's been kidnapped. I don't know how Lydia faked all of this, but it is insane. So anyway, Betty's freaking out because she thinks her boyfriend's been kidnapped. And it's this whole chaotic scene. Now, let me pause this story here because this is about to get worse. Now let's talk about this woman, Jess. Now like Betty, Jess is also Australian, she's also a flight attendant. And a few years earlier, Jess was on a flight working, and by sheer coincidence, the real Lincoln Lewis was also on that flight.

And so Jess is a big fan, and she stops him and she gives him a hug, and she asks him for a picture, and they take this picture right here. Sometime later, Jess goes and friends Lincoln Lewis on Facebook. Here's the thing, though. The account that she friends isn't really his account. It's actually the fake account that Lydia had made to catfish Betty. So Lydia is the one who is now Facebook friends with Jess. So Jess now thinks she's Facebook friends with the real Lincoln Lewis. And of course, Lydia takes full advantage of this and she starts her catfishing scheme all over again.

And so now Jess and fake Lincoln start talking and they hit it off and they're chatting every day and soon they're texting all the time. And sometimes they'll talk on the phone. And now I'm not sure how that it works exactly, like was Lydia putting on a fake voice? I don't know. But they apparently talk on the phone a lot. And eventually they get into a long-distance romantic relationship. Which is crazy.

And it seems like Lydia is just really good at this catfishing stuff. Like she's never going to get caught. Until. One day, Jess gets a message from a coworker who works at the airlines. And co-workers like, hey, I just saw Lincoln Lewis on my flight. And Jess is like, well, that can't be. I was just talking to him. And so Jess goes and hits up Fake Lincoln, and she confronts him like,

how can you be in two places at once? And Fake Lincoln, aka Lydia, makes up, I don't know, some bullshit excuse. But see, Jess is smarter than that. She's not about to get played. And so she decides she is done. And she tries to cut things off with Fake Lincoln. But Fake Lincoln is like, no. he's not about to let her get away.

So he starts sending her threatening messages and calling her all the time and harassing her and apparently contacting her family. And so Jess is fed up. She's like, fuck this, I'm going to take whoever this is down. And she starts recording their phone conversations. And she brings all this information to the police. So now, finally, police get involved.

And they set up this small sting operation where Jess asks fake Lincoln to why, her some money, just like a couple hundred dollars, because her phone is broken and she needs to get it fixed. So fake Lincoln, aka Lydia, falls for it. She's like, all right. And he, she goes to the bank to wire a couple of hundred dollars to Jess, and boom. They finally get Lydia on camera. The woman who had been pretending to be Lincoln Lewis the whole time. And eventually, bam, police arrest her. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of her in real life. And both Betty and Jess finally discover that it's a woman who's been catfishing them the whole time, not a man, and they are shocked.

Like they had no idea. I have no idea how Lydia pulled that off. But here's the sad part. Betty, apparently, she can't handle the humiliation of any of this. And she eventually goes and she unalives herself over this whole catfishing thing, which is unfortunate and just really sad. And ultimately, Lydia goes to trial and she's found guilty of stalking, and she's sentenced to two years, eight months,

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