Mystery surrounds feted photographer who never existed

SINGAPORE — The fraudster created false identity and stole images, duping netizens and renowned news agencies.

Max Hepworth-Povey is a 32-year-old British surfer who travels the world finding big waves, seeking thrills and teaching yoga.

Daniel C. Britt is a US photographer who covers wars and conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose work has appeared in various reputable news agencies and Getty Images.

Two men, worlds apart in location and interests. So what do they have in common?

In the past week, it was revealed that these two real people were cobbled together to create the fictitious Brazilian war photographer Eduardo Martins, who had amassed more than 120,000 followers on Instagram.

So how did Martins carry out his lie so well?

First, he created a back story about how he had been abused as a child and had survived leukemia after being bedridden for seven years in Sao Paolo.

Second, he presented a narrative as a dashing young man who had turned his life around and had found meaning dedicating his life to exposing the atrocities in Gaza, Iraq and Syria.

His work was published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, BBC, The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, among others.

But BBC Brasil contributor Natasha Ribeiro became suspicious after finding out that not one person in the small pool of Brazilian journalists had ever met Martins in person.

It turns out that Martins stole images from legitimate war photographers like Britt and digitally manipulated the image of Hepworth-Povey in them to make them seem authentic.

In many cases, he inverted the images he stole to make it harder for news organizations to detect the plagiarism. Ribeiro got in touch with his supposed employer — the United Nations — which confirmed that he was not part of its staff.

I will cut off everything, including the internet, and I deleted my Instagram account.”

Eduardo Martins,

His deception did not stop there. To keep up his lie, he conducted several interviews online with various websites. Each time, he pretended to initiate a video conference call but, citing connection issues, reverted to a text-based interview over messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

Martins also found the time to leverage his popularity to strike up online romances with at least six women. None of them ever met him in person.

Once his game was up, Martins immediately deleted his Instagram account and erased his digital trail. His last message to an interviewer claimed he was in Australia.

“I made the decision of spending a year traveling around the world in a van. I will cut off everything, including the internet, and I deleted my Instagram account,” he wrote. “I want to be in peace. We’ll speak again when I’m back.”

And because he has been savvy about how he has conducted his fabricated life, his identity remains a mystery.

fraudster