A BESOTTED granny, 56, sent a conman posing as Hollywood actor Kenny Johnson £34,000 before realising she had been duped.

Sharon Brown assumed she was having a real online romance with the hunky actor, but was made to feel a "fool" after realising she'd been tricked into handing over the huge sum.

Johnson has had a string of roles in top American TV dramas, including Sons of Anarchy, S.W.A.T and Dexter.

But a vile fraudster pretending to be the Hollywood star managed to fool the lonely gran into thinking she was being wooed over a period of more than three months.

He tricked Brown by praising her in hundreds of messages, including dubbing her the woman of his dreams.

Brown was targeted after she innocently followed Johnson, 55, on his official Instagram account, “thekennethjohnson” which has 140,000 followers.

Then, on November 9 last year, she received a personal message from a similar sounding Instagram account, saying: “Thank you for all your love and supports. You’re appreciated.”

She noticed the account called “thekenny_johnson” had only 80 followers and initially ignored the message as she thought it could not really be the actor, who most recently starred as Officer Dominque Luca in US cop show S.W.A.T.

I feel such a fool for falling for such a scam. This guy flattered me and I believed he was Kenny.

Sharon Brown, Con Victim
But three days later, another message popped up in her Instagram inbox, asking: “Have you been watching Swat?”

Brown, who has been divorced for 20 years, made the fateful decision to reply “Yes”.

Unfortunately, she was so smitten with the star that she was duped into agreeing to help financially when the fraudster gave her a sob story saying he needed money to replace damaged film cameras.

Despite taking home only £282-a-week as a payroll clerk, and never meeting her "suitor" in person, she found £34,000 and sent it to a bank account in Turkey.

Brown scraped the cash together by taking out a £10,000 bank loan, borrowing £20,000 from a 91-year-old relative and putting another £4,000 on to her credit card.

She only came to her senses last week when she was targeted by another conman also pretending to be the Hollywood star.

"HE INSISTED HE WAS KENNY"
Fighting back tears, Brown, who lives in Ipswich, Suffolk, said: “I feel such a fool for falling for such a scam. This guy flattered me and I believed he was Kenny. He was just so convincing.

“He kept saying that he loved me and like an idiot I believed him. I just want to speak out and warn other women about the fraudsters who are out there.”

She said that she and the fraudster had been messaging each other on the Google Hangouts app "almost every day and he would praise me.

"When I said I had been a payroll clerk for an agency for 30 years, he said: ‘Wow that’s awesome. You must be a very hard working woman’."

At one stage she asked, "Am I talking to the real Kenneth Johnson? … I can’t imagine an actor would want to talk to me.’

“He insisted he was Kenny and that he felt something special about me.

“Then he suggested video calling each other on the app so I could see that he was really Kenny. Two minutes later there was this video of Kenny lying on his bed for a minute or so.”

Brown now believes that the conman simply found a short video of Johnson on the internet and sent it to fool her after turning off the sound.

"I FELL FOR HIM"
But she said: “At the time, all my thought about him being fake disappeared. I felt shocked and flattered. We exchanged hundreds of messages and I fell for him.

“He seemed caring and interested in me. Eventually he asked if I wanted to be one of his co-ordinators for his orphanage in Nigeria so I could supervise what was going on there.”

Brown volunteered to donate £50 to the orphanage and he gave her a Nigerian account number to send the cash by Western Union.

The fraudster pretended that he was falling for the gran, saying he was “really attracted” to her and wanted to find a woman who would love him for being himself, not just as a star.

Brown said: “I felt he was genuinely keen on me even though I was thinking, ‘Why is he interested in a divorced granny from Ipswich?’ I told him that I was there for him and started to call him ‘Baby’.

“We swapped pictures of each other. He called me ‘Honey’ and said I was beautiful."

The fraudster filled his messages with tales of Hollywood glamour, talking about his filming schedule as well as his love and dedication to his nine-year-old daughter.

Then on December 21, he claimed that a vehicle taking him to a show had crashed, damaging an uninsured camera worth £57,000 ($75,000) that he needed for his new film.

BEGGING FOR HELP
The conman said he urgently needed £30,300 ($40,000) to pay his film crew, and begged her for help.

The gran rushed down to her local branch of the Halifax bank, taking out a £10,000 loan which she said was for a new car, repayable at £182 a month for seven years.

He told her to send the money to a Turkish bank account, saying he was buying a new camera in Turkey as delivery would be faster.

Brown, who lives with her 86-year-old father, got the £10,000 transferred the next day, believing the fraudster’s promise that he would pay her back.

She said: “My oldest daughter said, ‘Don’t do it” and my youngest one said it was a scam – but I had already sent the money.”

The fraudster then requested more money, saying that another $25,000 was needed by his Turkish supplier.

She borrowed £20,000 from her 91-year-old relative, telling him it was “a start-up loan” for her to work in the film world, and she sent the money to the Turkish account on January 17.

The fraudster urged her for even more cash, saying the Turkish supplier needed another £3,800 ($5,000) for shipping costs.

Gullible Brown got hold of the money, withdrawing £4,000 from her credit card and transfered it.

But the following day she suddenly got an unsolicited Facebook message from yet another false account in the name of Kenny Johnson, thanking her for her love and support.

Once again, the person who messaged her tried to persuade her to go on to Google Hangouts and sent her pictures and a video of Johnson, pretending that he was the actor.

Brown admitted: “I realised I was being targeted again in exactly the same way.”

She has now reported the con to police and Action Fraud, but fears she has lost the money she sent.