Dianne Ringstaff met a stranger while playing Words With Friends.
He told her he was Keanu Reeves. And for two and a half years, every video call, every word, every gesture on screen confirmed it: the same voice, the same face, the same smile she had seen in dozens of films. Ringstaff, from Palmetto, Florida, had just lost her partner and her dog. She was alone, and on the other side of the screen someone seemed to understand her.
Then the excuses began: an ex-manager was suing him, the FBI had planted drugs on him, and his assets had been frozen by the authorities. He needed money, in Bitcoin, urgently. She took out a loan against her house and sold her car. In total, she sent 160.000 dollars to a man who never existed, constructed with artificial intelligence precise enough to sustain the deception for years. The Marion County Sheriff’s Office later confirmed something worse: money from other victims had also passed through her accounts.
