Facebook Celebrity-Turned-Fraudster Shocks Bulgaria

When Vanya Kramer, a Bulgarian journalist based in Chicago, found out she urgently had to fly back to Bulgaria together with her family in July, she looked for a good offer for plane tickets.

A good friend got her in touch with Alexander Nikolov, a Bulgarian based in Paris who was offering cheap flights.

Kramer did not hesitate to buy the tickets from the Nikolov, especially after finding out that he was in her friends list on Facebook and that they shared over 80 friends - all high-profile Bulgarians.

Together with her husband and son, they flew back to Bulgaria without any problems.

But later, she found out that over 13,000 US dollars had been charged from her credit card, as she had given the ticket seller her card details.

"What fooled me is that many people had travelled with tickets bought from him, and we had so many common friends, who were sharing him as an expert," the journalist told BIRN on Wednesday.

"It is scary how many of us have been so uncritical and have been caught off guard," she added.

Since July, Kramer has been in touch with at least 60 people who Nikolov also defrauded.

In July, some of them alerted the Bulgarian policе. On Tuesday, the organized crime directorate of the Interior Ministry confirmed that it had identified who was behind the fake Facebook profile and had launched an investigation.

The ministry refused to give more information about the identity of the suspect to BIRN on Wednesday, however, explaining that this risked compromising the investigation.

The case is without precedent in Bulgaria as the fraudster had built up a large network of prominent contacts among Bulgarians living in the country and abroad, targeting well-educated middle-class people. Among his...