The Chameleon revealed

It was one of the most elaborate and utterly bizarre ruses ever pulled off.
For five months Frenchman Frederic Bourdin managed to convince an entire family he was their missing 16-year-old son - despite being 23-years-old.
Bourdin turned up in Spain claiming to be Texas schoolboy Nicholas Barclay three years after he disappeared aged 13.

Serial imposter: Frenchman Frederic Bourdin managed to convince and American family he was their missing teenage son Nicholas Barclay

Elaborate: Bourdin managed to keep up the ruse of being Nicholas, despite having brown eyes instead of blue and different facial features, for five months until his deception was discovered by a private investigator

Nicholas's family flew to meet him and despite the fact Bourdin had a completely different eye colour to their son - blue instead of brown - they took him in believing his elaborate story that the change was down to experiments carried out by his captors.

 

He was only caught out by a private investigator working on the story for a TV station in 1997. He was jailed for six years for the con.
And, even more incredibly, the elaborate ruse was not the first time Bourdin had posed as a missing child.
In fact, he'd made a habit of it over the years, switching from one alias to another with more than 40 different personas.
Now the bizarre story of Bourdin - nicknamed 'the Chameleon' - has been turned into a film.

Conman: Despite being jailed in 1997 for pretending to be Nicholas Barclay, Bourdin was caught out again in 2005 pretending to be a Spanish orphan at a French school

Another con: In 2003 Bourdin stole the identity of 14-year-old Leo Balley who vanished on a camping trip in Isere eight years earlier

The Chameleon had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival this week and reveals how the serial imposter kept up the deception by dyeing his brown hair blond, going back to school, and using a pen to fake a tattoo on his hand.
But the Barclay ruse turned out to just be the tip of the iceberg.
Bourdin was born in 1974 on the outskirts of Paris. He never knew his father and was bought up by his poor grandparents after he mother abandoned him when he was aged just two.

The Chameleon: Frederic Bourdin being interviewed on French television about his numerous personas

He began misbehaving and was sent to a school for young troublemakers aged 12.
When he was 16, Bourdin ran away to Paris where he unsuccessfully tried to tell a police officer he was a lost British teenager. His inability to speak much English caught him out.
Bourdin then made a career out of pretending to be orphans across Europe - using sob stories to be fed, clothed and looked after. He has since learned to speak five languages fluently.
After his release from prison for pretending to be Nicholas Barclay, Bourdin immediately took up his way of life again, stealing the identity of 14-year-old Leo Balley in 2003 who vanished on a camping trip in Isere eight years earlier. He was busted by a DNA test.
His latest exploit was in 2005 when he attended the Jean Monnet school in Pau, France, posing as Spanish orphan Francisco Hernandez-Fernandez.
He was only unmasked when a teacher at the school recognised him in a television programme about his exploits.
Talking about the deception, Bourdin said: 'I loved the kids and the people looking after them, they treated me as one of them.
The French news agency AFP quoting him as saying at the time that he sought 'love and affection' by assuming false identities.
The school head was quoted as saying Bourdin 'appeared a bit older than his pals - two or three years at most'.
In 2007, Bourdin married a French woman named Isabelle after vowing to give up his life as a serial imposter. Now Bourdin, aged 38, has three chilren with his wife.
The Chameleon was written and directed by Jean-Paul Salomé. Bourdin, renamed Grondin in the movie, helped as a consultant on the film and was portrayed by Canadian actor Marc-André Grondin.


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