So, Jason Statham is the ideal Secret Santa recipient we’d all like to have. That is known. But what happens when you befriend him online and he starts asking you for money?

Yes, friends, this happened to a woman online, who ended up sending hundreds of thousands of pounds (that’s the English version of money!) to help who she thought was Jason Statham with his alleged financial difficulties.

How do I know this? Well, I Googled Jason Statham (like I do every Thursday) and this piece of news popped up from the BBC.

Per the article:

The woman said she was first contacted online by someone posing as Mr Statham while she was on a Facebook page dedicated to the Fast and Furious star.

“I thought ‘Oh, that’s nice of him, talking to his fans’. I might have been star-struck then, I don’t know,” she said.

The fraudster then encouraged her to use the encrypted WhatsApp service, sending her hundreds of messages over several months.

I mean, so far, so good, this sounds like typical Statham stuff, right? (I mean, I’m guessing. I don’t know the man personally.)

The article continues, though:

The fraudster posing as Mr Statham told her he loved her and eventually asked her to help with some financial difficulties, claiming a film payment was delayed.

She then made a series of payments to the fraudster, totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Yikes. That’s where she went wrong. As my mom always said to me, never pay Jason Statham after talking to him only online. You always need an in-person, first, before you part with six figures worth of cash. I guess not everyone’s family is wary of Jason Statham’s online presence.

I mean, we’ve all fallen victim to some dumb stuff online, and it sounds like this person was going through some s*it when not-Jason Statham hit her up for money (according to the article, her mother, and fiancé had just died. The comma use is very important there, because she was not, in fact, engaged to her mother, but I digress) so I feel like we should give her a mulligan here, and not pile on her. We should all be so lucky to have enough cash lying around to hook up a not-Jason Statham with it.

Anyway, the entire point of writing this article is to put to work the very important lesson Russell Crowe taught us 19 years ago in Proof of Life, mainly that you need a proof of life in these sorts of situations. Specifically that that life is Jasons Statham’s and not someone pretending to be Jason Statham. I can’t find the exact clip where he uses the words “proof of life” so here’s the end of the movie with Crow emoting over Van Morrison’s music. I expect you to use your imagination that earlier in the movie, he said those words, OK?

So, in summation, if a dude poses as Jason Statham online, tells you that he loves you, and then asks you for money, please take extra precautions towards verifying that it is actually Jason Statham, star of The Meg and the upcoming Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and not, like, someone saying they’re Jason Statham On the internet asking you for money when they’re not the Jason Statham you’re thinking of. You can verify this by watching Proof of Life and then asking online maybe not-Jason Statham his thoughts on the movie. Well, maybe that’s not it, and now I’ve confused myself, so just figure it out yourself, OK? I’ve done most of the heavy lifting for you on this matter, the rest is up to you.

Kate is a staff contributor. You can follow her on Twitter.

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