PHOTO ESSAY: How being used as romance scammers' bait upended one man's world

TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — The victims knew him as a widowed petroleum geologist in Houston. An oil rig worker in Scotland. A Spanish secret agent named John.

Each online persona was fake, concocted by romance scammers to trick the lovesick out of their money. And each bore the face of one man: Hunter Bigham.

For more than eight years, romance scammers have stolen Hunter’s photos to create hundreds of fake online profiles. When many victims realize they’ve been duped, they dig — eventually finding Hunter. The losses he’s tallied just from victims who have contacted him have reached roughly $1.4 million.

As the face of scammers’ schemes, people like Hunter are highly visible. As victims of identity theft, they are virtually unseen, left to handle the fallout alone: Hunter’s requests to internet platforms to remove the fake profiles have been largely rejected, and his complaints to the FBI have gotten him nowhere.

Some victims, wrongly believing that Hunter is the scammer, threaten to hurt him, his family and themselves, injecting a thread of dread into his daily life. One victim from Switzerland flew to France where Hunter was vacationing with his family just to see that he was real.

The real Hunter Bigham is a father of three who lives with his husband, Johnny, in Elvis Presley’s hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi. He spends his time not on oil rigs, but on the phone as a sales executive for a furniture manufacturer. He also spends his time on social media posting photos of himself and his family — and promoting his side hustle, as he calls it, in the adult entertainment industry.

For a gay man in the American South who fought to live his true identity, the theft of it has been particularly agonizing — as has the suggestion that he try to stop the scammers by erasing himself from the internet. Vanishing from public view, he says, feels like being forced back into the closet.

At its peak, he says, up to 15 victims a day contacted him. He feels compelled to reply to every victim, reassuring the heartbroken they are worthy of love.

His message-checking became a protective mechanism against aggressive victims he sought to calm before things escalated. Vicious or depressing messages could tank his mood for the day.

He stopped talking about it much, even to Johnny. Silence felt simpler than trying to explain an experience so alien to most.

Johnny absorbed his partner’s emotional shrapnel. Soft-spoken and nurturing, he is a worrier who became even more so amid his husband’s fixation on the pain of strangers.

Each morning, Johnny wakes to the glow of Hunter’s phone as Hunter begins his ritualistic message-checking from bed. Until recently, Johnny didn’t understand what was really happening inside his husband’s mind.

What’s happening is this: Are any of the victims about to kill themselves? Are any coming after my family? How can I defuse the ticking time bombs in my inbox?

One recent night, sitting amid thousands of fans at a Mississippi State football game, thoughts about the scammers invade Hunter’s mind, cutting through the chaos of the crowd’s clanging cowbells, the Dolly Parton tributes, the thumping of the marching band’s bass drums. He tries to check his messages, but the network is overloaded.

He knows he can’t continue like this. But he's at a loss for how to stop the scammers from scamming, and how to stop himself from caring.

Beyond his sense of responsibility to the victims is his feeling of kinship toward them, over their shared shame and longing for love. Raised as a Southern Baptist to believe that homosexuality is a sin, finding true love had long seemed unattainable to him.

“I understand after coming out, thinking that I will never have it myself, what it is like to finally find it — or think you found it,” he says, of love, ”... and that you will do anything in the world to protect it.”

This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.

Hunter Bigham, left, and his husband, Johnny, walk to their car after attending a Mississippi State college football game, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, right, who for more than eight years has had his photos stolen by romance scammers to create hundreds of fake online profiles, sits to eat at a barbecue restaurant with his husband, Johnny, left, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham walks to his car after attending a Mississippi State college football game, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham posts a photo of himself, right, with his husband, Johnny, attending a Mississippi State college football game, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, left, embraces his father, Ernest, at the start of a Mississippi State college football game, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, right, and his husband, Johnny, stand for the national anthem before a Mississippi State college football game, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Military jets perform a flyover as Hunter Bigham raises a cowbell while attending a Mississippi State college football game with his husband, Johnny, right, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, who for more than eight years has had his photos stolen by romance scammers to create hundreds of fake online profiles, works in his home office, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, right, and his husband, Johnny, sit in their living room with their phones in hand while watching television, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, left, and his husband, Johnny, walk past the church at the Elvis Presley Birthplace museum in Tupelo, Miss., Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Johnny Bigham, right, who worries about the burden his husband, Hunter, on phone at left, carries from scammers stealing his image to lure victims online, waters his bonsai trees at their home, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, right, and his husband, Johnny, are photographed in their home, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, who has a side job in the adult entertainment industry and started lifting weights around the time he came out, flexes in front of a mirror during a gym workout, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, who for more than eight years has had his photos stolen by romance scammers to create hundreds of fake online profiles, works out at a gym, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026 in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, left, and his husband, Johnny, pick figs from their backyard, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, at their home in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, left, and his husband, Johnny, make breakfast, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, at their home in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

The steeple of a church is seen through the window of the Bigham family home next to a rainbow flag, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham, left, checks his phone for messages from people being targeted by scammers using his images, part of his morning routine, as his husband, Johnny, continues to sleep, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, at their home in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Hunter Bigham messages a scammer he suspects is using his social media post to phish for victims, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, part of his morning routine before getting out of bed at his home in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A portrait of Hunter Bigham and screenshots of fake social media profiles from scammers using Bigham's images are captured in this single long exposure photograph, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026, in Tupelo, Miss. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Rory McIlroy started the strongest of the Race to Dubai title contenders at the season-ending World Tour Championship on Thursday, shooting 3-under 69 to lie in third place and two strokes off first-round leader Joost Luiten.

McIlroy is seeking to claim the year-long award — crowning the best No. 1 player on the European tour that season — for a record-tying eighth time, and for the fifth straight year. He is guaranteed to do so with a victory at Jumeirah Golf Estates this week.

The world No. 2 is second in the Race to Dubai standings behind Eugenio Chacarra, who shot 72 and was already three strokes behind McIlroy.

They were in the final pairing on Thursday and McIlroy underlined his first-round superiority on the par-5 No. 18 with a 254-yard approach to 13 feet that set up a tap-in birdie, while Chacarra laid up from the rough and had to settle for par.

“Anything in the 60s today I felt was a good score,” McIlroy said, a nod to the tricky conditions at the Earth course because of crosswinds and punishing thick rough lining the fairways and around the greens. “And sort of held it together nicely when I needed to.”

Chacarra, playing his first year on the tour, acknowledged he was at a disadvantage against McIlroy and others who “have played this course a million more times.”

“I know I need to do a couple of things better to be able to have a chance on Sunday, and that’s what I’m going to focus on," the Spaniard said. "If I fix those, a little strategy-wise, and I can putt a little better, I think I’m going to have a chance on Sunday.”

Patrick Reed, third in the Race to Dubai standings and the other realistic title contender, failed to turn around his recent slump in form and shot 75. After dropping a shot at No. 14 for his fourth bogey of the day, the American appeared to toss his putter toward his bag in frustration as he headed to the next tee.

Jon Rahm, the champion in Abu Dhabi last week who needs to win again and hope for Chacarra and McIlroy to finish way down the leaderboard, opened with 71.

Luiten handled the tough conditions the best. He went out in 31 after five birdies in his front nine and was even par coming home, with a 6-foot birdie putt at the par-5 18th wrapping up a round of 67.

With so many points on offer this week, a win also would come with a huge reward for any outsider like Luiten. That’s because up for grabs this week are 10 places on next season’s PGA Tour available to European tour members who are not otherwise exempt.

Luiten isn’t currently one of those 10. He was a stroke clear of Jakob Skov Olesen, who is among those in line for a PGA Tour card.

Victor Perez, Gregorio De Leo, Freddy Schott and Francesco Laporta were alongside McIlroy a further shot back after their 69s.

Kota Kaneko has become the second Japanese player to win the rookie of the year award on the European tour, at the end of a season when he won the Austrian Alpine Open and finished runner-up at the Soudal Open in a two-week stretch in May.

“The first person was Ryo Hisatsune, (who) is a good friend of mine, same age, and I know him really well,” the 24-year-old Kaneko said. “So I’m really happy to be in the same category with him.”

Kaneko also had four other top-20 finishes to qualify as one of the leading 50 available players for the World Tour Championship, where he shot 74 in the first round.

See AP’s full golf coverage here

Patrick Reed of the United States tees off on the second hole during the first round of the World Tour Golf Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Eugenio Chacarra of Spain tees off on the second hole during the first round of the World Tour Golf Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland gestures after his shot on the third hole during the first round of the World Tour Golf Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays a shot on the 15th hole during the first round of the World Tour Golf Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays a shot on the 15th hole during the first round of the World Tour Golf Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)