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[Gossip / dating safety] Mariana van Zeller is trending on Google Trends US ahead of her National Geographic special "Super Scam Me", which premieres October 17 at 9pm EDT (streaming on Disney+ and Hulu the same day; UK: October 18, 10pm). This recap sticks to what Business Insider, TechRadar and Laughing Place reported.
The Bon Jovi impersonator Leslie Pickett, 55, a mortgage lender from north Louisiana, told Business Insider she had been a Jon Bon Jovi fan since she was 14. In late 2024 she commented on his verified Instagram and then got a direct message from a different account using his face. The account asked about her favorite songs, warned that "management" would shut the page if they found out, and moved the chat to WhatsApp or Telegram.
How it escalated Over roughly ten months she received constant messages, recorded videos and one grainy live video call. The money requests started with a paid meet-and-greet through his "management" (Laughing Place), and he kept asking for more (Business Insider). She says she lost $10,000; van Zeller told TechRadar she almost lost her house. The real Jon Bon Jovi had nothing to do with it; he was the person being impersonated.
Tracking the scammer Pickett contacted van Zeller, who was filming the special. Working with a reformed hacker, they set a bitcoin "trap" that revealed the scammer's IP address in Lagos, Nigeria (Business Insider).
What van Zeller says She went undercover as "Mary Zell" and found the pattern starts with small talk, then turns into love-bombing, with messages several times a day, long before any money request. According to the documentary's makers, as cited by TechRadar, an estimated one in seven American adults have lost money to this kind of scam, and romance scammers took more than $1 billion from Americans in 2025. Pickett now reports fake celebrity profiles every day and says only three or four in ten get removed.
Red flags from the reporting: a "celebrity" DM from an unverified account, pressure to move to WhatsApp or Telegram, secrecy about "management", and any paid meet-and-greet or fee. This page doesn't name scam accounts and doesn't make claims about anyone beyond what was reported.
