The 24-year-old influencer who called himself “Paul Zimmer” on Musical.ly is alleged to be pretending to be a 16-year-old “Troy Becker” after being accused multiple times of scamming his followers.
Paul Zimmer’s identity
“Paul Zimmer” was a star of Musial.ly (currently known as TikTok) until he disappeared completely from the internet for allegedly scamming his fans for supposed “monetary gifts”. However, after almost two years of absence, a young man with characteristics almost identical to Zimmer, known as Troy Becker, appeared.
After a long charade, an investigation by Insider showed that both celebrities are, in effect, the same person – who was not even called Paul Zimmer, but Paul Josef Gutowski. This revelation has left many baffled, and others questioning the reasons that led the young man to change his identity.
The young Paul Josef was able to legally change his name on March 19, 2019, according to court records in the Superior Court of California. This, however, was long after he became known as Troy Becker on multiple websites.
Zimmer’s complicated case
“Paul Zimmer” disappeared in 2017 along with his partner Jamie Rose. This was motivated by multiple requests to ban him from the Musical.ly platform for scamming its young audience.
Subsequently, there were 2 years in which nothing was known about him, but then, an Instagram account called @TroyBeckerIG appeared. After several publications from Beker, “Paul Zimmer” reappeared from nowhere to comment that the new actor “Troy Becker” was quite similar to him.
Many fans were dismayed by the obvious similarities between the two influencers. Paul Zimmer always denied until December of last year that they were the same person. One of his latest posts as Zimmer was “This kid actor @TroyBeckerIG literally looks like a younger and sexier version of me. I don’t even use social media anymore, but I had to post this hahah. ”
At the end of the year, @paulzimmer said he would be leaving social networks permanently, and in a strange movement, the retired influencer would donate all his accounts to Troy Becker. However, last week, after New Statesman made public the history of Zimmer’s scams and the obvious relationship he has with Becker, the @paulzimmer and @TroyBeckerIG accounts are no longer available. Additionally, Becker’s TikTok account underwent a drastic change, adopting a generic username and removing all recently uploaded content on it.
So far, Troy Becker has not been able to be contacted to respond to the new controversy.
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