My Victimization By An Internet Con Artist

This story is true. Some names have been changed to protect privacy. Celebrity names have been given as they were by the con artist but there was no actual relationship between “Claire Campbell” and anyone famous.

When I met Claire on America Online, I was a housewife and my husband a college professor. Visiting a Classic TV group, I exchanged Instant Messages with a BEST TAN who was authoritative on Man from UNCLE.

She claimed she had dedicated an entire room of her home to UNCLE and David McCallum memorabilia. It seemed unusual that someone would be that obsessed with an actor and an old TV show but I had heard of other people who had made TV programs into hobbies. “He’s had a very interesting life,” she IM’d. “Do you know if there’s a good bio out on him?” I queried. “Someone’s writing one,” she answered. “Who?” “Me.” “Have you met him personally?” “Yes! We’ve done more than interview. Want me to call you on the phone?” I told her I lived in Atlanta and asked where she would be calling from. She said she was in Pennsylvania but didn’t mind making a long distance call. I gave her my number, then turned my computer off and waited.

“Hi,” a female voice said. “Is this Denise Noe?” “Yes. BEST TAN?” “My real name is Claire Giannini.” “How close are you to David McCallum?” “I couldn’t get much closer.” “You mean . . . you’re his . . . girlfriend?”
“Yes.” “Isn’t he married?” I asked. “He and Katherine are separated. I’m married too.” “Oh. Does your husband know about your relationship with David?” “Well,” she replied, “Vito’s a jerk . . . the cops have come to our house because he was beating me. I have a good friend on the police force. He once warned Vito, ‘I’ve known this kid since high school and I’m not going to let you get away with anything.’ Of course, Vito doesn’t like it that David and I fell in love.”

“It must be something to be close to someone famous,” I said, wondering if she were telling the truth. I thought it likely she was just playing a fantasy out with me but felt it couldn’t do any harm to play along. Besides, she might be telling the truth. “Oh, yeah. I’ve got a friend, I was telling her about meeting Dave and she just couldn’t believe it and then one day, we were at my place and he called and I gave the phone to her and she heard his voice and said ‘Oh, wow!’”

“I’d be thrilled to hear his voice,” I said honestly. This was especially true since I would have confirmation that Claire actually knew him.

“Denise, I think you’re so lucky to live in Bravestown,” Claire told me. “They’ve always been my favorite team even though I live in Pennsylvania. I’ll see you if I come to Atlanta. I’ve got to get over there to catch a Braves game. I especially like that pitcher, Greg Maddux. He’s so cute.”

While I was communicating with Claire on a regular basis, she told me how she and David had fallen in love. She had been working on a book about his life and had written to him several times. He had finally written back to aid her with her project. Eventually, he decided they could meet face-to-face. At that time, according to the story Claire told, McCallum had just separated from his wife Katherine and a romance between David and Claire blossomed.

Soon Claire sent me a letter through regular mail with the words GO BRAVES! on the outside of the envelope. It was dated May 30 [19]95. In it, she discussed how she first became a fan of David McCallum’s: “I started like everyone else I was small and watched UNCLE. for the first time and went nuts over the shy blonde!” Then she began “to collect magazines, books, all his albums and 45′s the Illya doll, the Thrush gun and the communicator pen and badges.” She claimed to have been offered big bucks for some of her collectibles: “spy-con [a fan club devoted to UNCLE} wanted to buy my THRUSH gun for $1,000 dollars, I said NO!!!! A fan in Colorado wanted my Illya doll for $500 but I won’t part with it!”

About the biography she was writing she said, “I'm still doing the book, I have much of the rough draft done, however, there's much to add, and I don't put anything in without his approval. So far he likes it.” She also talked about their personal involvement, writing that, “as far as my relationship with him well that's very private although we do go out in public. There is nothing to hide [since] legally they [David and Katherine] are separated.” Claire promised that she would introduce me to David McCallum.

LUVILLYA was another Claire screen name. It was inspired by the name of the character David McCallum played in Man from UNCLE, Illya Kuryakin.

Claire and I were chatting when David supposedly came online. He talked about how passionate his affair with Claire was and both of them complained about her abusive husband, Vito.

Claire phoned the next day. “David said, ‘Oh, no, I bet Denise is calling up the National Enquirer right now and we’re going to be reading about that IM session next week.’ But I told him I had a good feeling about you and don’t think you’d do that,” she said. “No, of course not,” I replied. I felt a little puffed up. I would never sell out a friend just because he was famous. Then I checked myself: the only voice I had heard was Claire’s. She was the only person I knew I had talked with.

Along with e-mails from and IMs with Claire, I started getting e-mails signed “David” and frequently IMing with someone claiming to be the actor. Claire and I also communicated via the post office. The first thing she mailed me was an envelope stuffed with information about David McCallum. There were several clippings from the McCallum Observer, a fan magazine devoted entirely to the actor. One clipping was of a young woman with long blonde hair cheek-to-cheek with David McCallum. Claire claimed in a phone conversation that that cutout was a photograph of her and McCallum. I believed I was talking to David McCallum online but I wasn’t sure. However, there was a point at which I expected to get proof.

I told the supposed two of them that I couldn’t keep spending so much time online since, at the time, AOL charged by the hour. “David” offered to help. He insisted and I gave him my address so he could send me a money order. It did not arrive. “David told me he sent it over a week ago,” Claire said in a call, sounding puzzled. “Your address is 3833 Peachtree St., isn’t it?” “Oh,” I groaned. “It’s Peachtree Rd. “ “That must be it! I put down the wrong address.” I never got the money order — was it really lost in the mail? Or had it never been sent? Had Claire been playing a trick on me: pretending to be David McCallum, pretending “he” was going to send me assistance? I wasn’t rich or well known. Why would anyone go to such lengths to fool me? I got an e-mail from “David” in which he talked about buying Claire an engagement ring. Although I still wondered if these things were actually happening — what if they were? I had been the first to hear of a celebrity’s engagement!

Then I received a stunning e-mail. Claire was breaking the engagement! A bewildered “David” e-mailed: “Something’s wrong between Claire and me, Denise. I asked her if there was another guy and she didn’t deny it.” WHAT? I thought. Claire in love another man? Impossible! She worshipped David McCallum. Now that he wanted to marry her — she was breaking it up?

Claire soon phoned. “I just met this other guy,” she explained, “and I started to have so many feelings for him that I told David I have to start seeing him, just to see if the feelings will grow.” “But you’re so crazy about David,” I said. “Yes, but there’s a big age difference between us, David is so much older and . . . I just don’t know for sure.”

Discussing this development with “David,” I suggested that since Claire’s marriage to Vito had failed, she was reluctant to rush into another commitment. He thanked me for my insight and said he would not be online for awhile because he was going on tour. One thing I had been told should, I thought excitedly, have independent verification. Both Claire and David had said he was divorced. I searched the newspapers and the online news services but there was nothing about David McCallum’s divorce. Then I e-mailed Linda Mendoza, publisher of The McCallum Observer, with that question. She wrote back: “No, David McCallum is not divorced.” That settled it, I decided. I had never talked to David McCallum. Claire had been pretending to be other people.

People play a lot of games online: the medium is made for it. I liked Claire. We had had fun. So I decided to tell her I was onto the game but wanted to remain friends. I sent her an e-mail with that message. It got no reply. However, I kept sending her e-mails. Eventually I sent her a poem I had written and received a reply: “nice poem.” One day I caught her online and sent an IM. She said she didn’t like being called a liar. I told her there had been nothing in the media about David’s divorce and she replied, “the papers only give you about 5% of what’s really going on.”

By this time, I was divorced from my husband and re-adjusting to single life. Claire said she was also divorced, had gone back to her maiden name of Campbell, and was cohabiting with her new boyfriend in Pennsylvania. Awhile after that, I received an IM from Claire saying she had broken up with him and was back in her hometown. Later Claire told me she was concerned about her best friend “who might be having a breakdown.” The friend wanted to be in a mental hospital but feared that if she committed herself she might not be able to get out. I got another IM from Claire in which she revealed that her friend was herself and that she was in rehab and doing OK except that she was broke, jobless, and needed a place to live. Could she stay with me? I told her my apartment was very small and it would be crowded. She said it would only be until she could get back on her feet. I said I wasn’t sure and we left it at that.

About a year later I got an IM from an unfamiliar screen name asking me if I knew Claire Campbell. I replied that I did but had had no recent contact with her. I asked him if he knew how she was doing. He said Claire wasn’t doing well. In fact, she had been arrested for numerous crimes of theft and fraud. He also said I had never talked to anyone but Claire and that she was a professional con artist.

At first I was suspicious but this story, unlike Claire’s, could be verified. An article had appeared in a newspaper about her attempt to sell a stolen computer. I wrote to the publisher of the McCallum Observer and found out that the picture Claire claimed was of her and McCallum was actually of Cordelia Roche and David McCallum in the PBS mini-series Mother Love. I contacted authorities in Pennsylvania and got a copy of Claire Campbell’s extensive criminal record. Then I called a police investigator who was working on her case. He asked, “Did Claire Campbell ever ask if she could stay with you?” I had just missed being badly taken. Claire Campbell had a peculiar but effective modus operandi. She pretended to be close to someone famous, either David McCallum and/or ballplayer Greg Maddux. Once trust was established, the victim was “introduced” to that famous party. Then a scenario was set up in which Claire was a victim of someone’s jealousy. Sometimes it was, as with me, her real-life husband Vito Giannini, whom she claimed was threatening her. Subsequent information showed that her assertions were probably lies and that it was more likely Claire had victimized Vito.

Others were told that, when her “romances” with David McCallum or Greg Maddux went south, the celebrity was stalking her. She pleaded for temporary refuge. If she got it, she would proceed to steal from her victim, forge his or her signature to open bank accounts, and run up huge expenses on the victim’s credit cards. At the same time, she backed up the story that her life was in danger by showing her victim horrible cuts and bruises. She once claimed that someone had burned her with a cigarette ten times on her inner thighs and let a victim look at those burns. Later she confessed to a detective that in order to enhance the believability of her claim of being physically abused she had taken a narcotic, Demerol, to dull the pain and then burned herself.
When the victim attempted to eject Claire, she would, in another persona, often that of a purportedly corrupt law enforcement authority, email or IM that person, threatening the victim with an IRS audit that would inevitably turn up something bad or with physical harm to his or her loved ones.

It was not until after an incident when an Atlanta day trader went on the shooting spree that I again heard from Claire who was free on bail pending her trial. Apparently she was reminded of me because I live in Atlanta. Claire claimed she had spent several days in jail for “stealing a computer that [a boyfriend] GAVE me.” Soon afterward, she was tried for a variety of crimes, including multiple charges of fraud, forgery, and theft by deception. She was convicted of six felonies and two misdemeanors and sentenced to prison.

Just before she started serving her sentence, she sent me an e-mail saying she would “be in London for several months” and unable to communicate with me online. While in prison, Claire was allowed to participate in a work-release program. On one of these excursions she failed to return to prison. She was apprehended and returned to prison. She has since been paroled, then in and out of jail several times. Releases have usually been followed by parole violations and further thefts and frauds.
The internet has been a blessing in many ways but it has also opened up new areas of danger and given scam artists a new venue in which to practice their destructive trade. I hope that this article will warn others to be extra careful and to remember that you usually cannot know with certainty who it is that you are talking to online.