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A sticky-fingered scammer impersonated Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood, duped a woman into a romance — and then tried to con her out of more than $8,000. Now, Stones lover Mary Downey tells Page Six she was left terrified by the ordeal. Downey — a casting director who worked on “Star Search” — tells us …
A sticky-fingered scammer impersonated Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood, duped a woman into a romance — and then tried to con her out of more than $8,000.
Now, Stones lover Mary Downey tells Page Six she was left terrified by the ordeal.
Downey — a casting director who worked on “Star Search” — tells us that back in June she left a message on Wood’s official Facebook page to wish him a happy birthday.
A different profile, apparently also belonging to the rock god, answered beneath her reply, asking her to send “him” a private message.
“Being in show business, I talk to celebrities a lot, and thought nothing of it,” she tells us. After exchanging messages, Downey says, the scammer asked her to video chat, but “we would never connect … He was very clever.”
“[The relationship] was romantic, but it never got sexual,” she says. “It was [him saying] how much he loves me.”
Two weeks in, the fake Woods — who would casually drop things like, “I just came back from lunch with Mick [Jagger],” into conversation — told her he was getting a divorce and moving to Miami. And he needed her to loan him $8,400 because he needed to pay real estate fees, but was afraid the bank would tip off the press about the split if he went through the normal channels.
Downey says that when he pushed for her bank account information, she knew something was up.
“I knew it was a con,” she told us. “At night, it scared me because I didn’t know if there was someone outside my house. It really began to affect my health,” she says.
Downey says her Instagram was hacked and she went to the FBI, but was told nothing could be done because no money was exchanged.
She is worried other women might fall for the scam, saying she wants to “bring attention to this epidemic of fraudulent activity sweeping the world.”
