Police are searching for an influencer who allegedly posed as a young woman with cancer and conned her “online boyfriend” out of £30,000.
Officers are looking for Luís Felipe de Oliveira after a court ordered his pre-trial detention on 4 March.
The 23-year-old has been charged with online fraud.
A civil court in Cotia, Brazil, has already ordered him to pay his victim – a local man – 10,000 BRL (£1,432) in damages.
The influencer, who goes by Felipe Heystee on social media and has millions of followers, is accused of posing on a dating app as a 19-year-old student with suspected cancer.
He allegedly spent more than two years in an online relationship with his victim, scamming him out of 207,000 BRL (£29,642) between May 2022 and August 2024.
The victim, a 46-year-old geographer who enjoys restoring antique furniture, believed he was in a relationship with a blue-eyed, long-haired student named Luana, who supposedly shared his passion for antiques.
He thought the money he sent was helping Luana pay for medical tests and treatment. He also covered her overdue rent and paid for takeaways to be delivered to her.
In one conversation, Luana wrote that she needed 730 BRL (£105) for “an ultrasound and a pap smear to check for cancer” and added: “I just remembered I didn’t pay my health insurance this month.”
Although they called each other “love” or “sweetie”, they never met in person or even had a video call.
“The person I was messaging said she was very shy,” the geographer recalled.
They spoke on the phone only once, and he said the female voice he heard during the call made him suspicious.
He also thought it was “strange” that most of his transfers went to accounts in Felipe’s name, as reported by Need To Know.
The scam began to unravel when the man did a reverse-image search of a photo Luana had sent with her mother.
“The photo belonged to another girl, standing next to a woman. She was a 16-year-old with a different name, and she’s also an influencer,” he said.
He contacted the girl’s parents on social media. “They said their daughter didn’t know Felipe and suggested he’d taken the girl’s photo without permission to trick me,” he explained.
The civil court’s compensation order has not yet been paid, and the criminal case has yet to be tried.
More than 200,000 BRL (£28,640) has been frozen in Felipe’s accounts by court order, potentially to reimburse his victim.
Prosecutors believe Felipe may have had other victims.
After the ordeal, the geographer says he no longer intends to pursue new relationships.
“It was my last try,” he said. “I don’t want to get involved with anyone else. I’ll just stay an uncle for life.”
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