Adrian Gatton

Category: Impostors

  • My Boyfriend the MI5 Hoaxer (Channel 4)

    My Boyfriend the MI5 Hoaxer (Channel 4)

    My Boyfriend the MI5 Hoaxer
    5th February 2010
    First Cut
    on Channel 4

    The tale of a modern-day Svengali. Nineteen-year-old Oxford jewellery shop assistant Leanne McCarthy found herself trapped in a modern nightmare of kidnap, fear and mind control when she met 23-year-old Wayne Gouveia, a sophisticated conman with a track record of duping young women.

    Wayne, who worked in a whisky shop in the same street, swept Leanne off her feet on several lavish dates and they started a relationship. He then set out to cleverly and meticulously convince Leanne he was an MI5 agent, assigned to protect her shop from a ruthless gang of jewel thieves.

    The couple embarked on a year of madness involving late-night stake-outs, car chases, safe-houses, narrow escapes from the gang and, in between, going to flashy hotels and on glamorous trips abroad.

    But Leanne’s doubts about Wayne grew as their adventures got darker and his behaviour became increasingly controlling. As she was driven to the brink of madness, getting away from him became a matter of survival.

    Wayne, it turned out, was one of Britain’s most disturbing hoaxers. In March 2009, he was finally jailed after conning Leanne out of thousands of pounds.

    In this moving and disturbing First Cut film, Leanne revisits the places and relives the memories where her bizarre adventures took place.

    Producer/Director: Adrian Gatton
    Executive Producer: Helen Littleboy

    Watch the programme online at 4oD, click here.

    From some of the reviews …

    “Here is a good movie plot: a pudgy-faced, innocent looking fantasist spins a web of deception. But My Boyfriend the MI5 Hoaxer is true…Wayne Gouveia emerges as a sinister manipulator who brainwashed his victim into paralysed, nightmarish compliance” – – Financial Times

    “Extraordinary, all of it, and fascinating” – Sam Wollaston, Guardian

    “Adrian Gatton’s First Cut film offers a stark warning about the power of sophisticated conmen through the staggering story of Leanne McCarthy.” – Mail on Sunday

    “absorbing” – Observer

    “gripping” – Broadcast

  • The Fantasist of 9/11 (Daily Mail)

    The Fantasist of 9/11 (Daily Mail)

    The fantasist of 9/11
    By Adrian Gatton
    12 September 2008
    Daily Mail

    The story of Tania Head’s escape from the Twin Towers captivated America and made her a heroine among survivors. Just one problem – she wasn’t even there that day.
    During the years following the 9/11 attacks, many stories emerged of triumph, tragedy and heroism. But one story stood out. Tania Head was one of only 19 people to survive above the point of impact in the South Tower at the World Trade Centre.

    Her story was triumphant and tragic. She was a survivor who, despite horrific burns, had escaped the falling towers, but she was a victim, too, in that she lost her fiance, Dave, when the North Tower collapsed.

    As Tania Head became president of the self-help group, the World Trade Centre Survivors’ Network, her vivid account of miraculous escape and tragic loss convinced everyone – politicians, media, fellow survivors and the families of those who died in the attacks.

    But Tania wasn’t who she said she was. And on the day of the attacks she wasn’t even in New York; she was thousands of miles away in Spain, sitting down to lectures at a business school in Barcelona, where she was completing a masters in business administration at one of Europe’s most prestigious – and expensive – business schools.

    Her fellow students went on to work in industry, but in 2003, Tania Head, a member of one of Barcelona’s richest families, flew to New York to adopt her carefully studied persona as a victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

    But why did she do it? To get the answers I had to search across the U.S., Spain and even Switzerland for clues.

    I quickly found that many doors in New York were shut, but I found copies of her copious emails and writings.

    The answer to Tania’s hoax appeared to lie in her own past, a mysterious arm injury and her almost professional pride in fulfilling her role successfully.

    But, more disturbingly, she took advantage of the culture of 9/11, in a so-called ‘hierarchy of suffering’ that built up among the survivors …

    Read the full article in the Daily Mail here. A version of this article was also published in the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, see the piece here.