Vin Diesel Impersonator Under Federal Investigation For Scam

A Vin Diesel impersonator ran a scam on a woman that ended up getting the authorities involved. He pretended to be the actor. v

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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If you are going to impersonate a celebrity, I suppose there are worse options out there than Vin Diesel. And if you are going to impersonate a celebrity and then run a scam, it would seem like you’d want to choose someone a little less famous. But that was the case recently with someone allegedly pretending to be the actor in order to run a grift on an unsuspecting woman. Someone claiming to be Vin Diesel tricked a reported fan of the actor and had money illegally deposited in her bank account. It’s definitely an odd story. 

According to MassLive, a Massachusetts woman thought she was in communication with the real actor Vin Diesel. How this relationship started isn’t totally clear, but she was communicating online with someone impersonating the actor, and through the course of their talks she provided him with personal information like bank account numbers and driver’s license pictures. She believed this was because she was helping support a charity run by the actor. But the Vin Diesel scammer, of course, had a different plan in mind.

It wasn’t long before the woman noticed an odd deposit in her bank account for a number totaling almost $17,000 dollars. The woman and her mother reported the odd deposit to the bank as well as the police. The check had come in the form of a government PPP loan, money used for relief for individuals and businesses during the pandemic. Apparently, the Vin Diesel impersonator had signed up for one using the woman’s information and the funds were placed in her account. 

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Apparently, now that the funds were discovered in the account, they will be reverted back to the US government. Even the Secret Service got involved with this one. It looks like the original scam was to have the Vin Diesel impersonator get the loan and then convince the woman to release the funds to him/ her. But things never got that far and the impropriety was discovered before that happened. 

As for the real Vin Diesel, well rest assured he isn’t trying to get a PPP loan scam off the ground. The dude is plenty busy these days with a number of different franchises. Of course, he released F9 this past summer which totaled more than $726 million at the box office, an impressive number in the best of times and definitely great during the pandemic. There are two more movies planned for that franchise before they wrap things up. It’s not clear if the franchise will continue on with a different iteration, but it doesn’t appear that Vin Diesel will be involved after that. 

He’s also set to reprise his role of Groot when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 finally hits the big screen. And he’s also slated to return to the Riddick franchise when Furya releases in a couple of years. It will have been more than a decade since the last film in that set hit the big screen. He also has Muscle in the works which will be directed by F. Gary Gray. So plenty of stuff going on for the actor, none of it having to do with scamming others.