Hollywood Heartbreak

For three long years, the divorced mother of two corresponded with the man she believed was her Hollywood Prince Charming--a hunk of an actor she hoped would rescue her from a life as a federal government worker, sleepless in Sacramento.

Over time, as their long-distance affair thickened through scores of letters and breathy late-night telephone calls, the woman sent more than $68,000 in checks, plus expensive clothes and racy, semi-nude self-portraits to her faraway lover. All the while, she thought her attentions were going to actor Michael Biehn, whom she had never met but had nonetheless fallen in love with after watching him play supporting roles in such movies as “The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “Tombstone.”

But this April Fools’ Day, reality finally knocked on her door: That is when a private investigator told her that the throaty telephone voice that had confided all those dreamy little secrets and had pledged undying love was not Biehn’s after all, but that of an alleged con artist who had assumed the actor’s identity.

Authorities this month arrested 31-year-old Michael Myette at a car dealership where he worked in Nashua, N.H., charging him with federal counts of mail fraud and illegal use of an assumed name, crimes that could bring a 10-year prison sentence.

For the 38-year-old Sacramento woman--whom authorities have declined to identify at her request--the allegations about Myette have come too late: By the time of his arrest, Myette’s alleged requests for money had prompted the woman to convince her mother to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans.

A deposition filed in U.S. District Court by a U.S. postal inspector alleges that at Myette’s request, the woman also quit her government job in order to tap into and empty her retirement fund--all to send money to the supposed actor who she fantasized would one day become her husband.

“In the years I have [dealt with] fraud cases, I have seen no crueler hoax than that described in these charges,” said one official close to the case. “It would appear that there are people out there willing to prey on any vulnerability a victim may possess.”

Court documents filed by U.S. Postal Inspector William Ricker paint a picture--based on letters he reviewed from both sides--of an obsession that grew over time.

Ricker, who could not be reached for comment, became involved because sending fraudulent letters through the U.S. mail is a federal crime.

The court documents claim that between 1994 and 1997, Myette, an ex-convict who lived briefly with Biehn’s manager in Hollywood, wrote 73 letters and made countless telephone calls to the woman.

Here is the tale the documents tell:

Apparently using a return address from a fan letter the woman had sent Biehn, Myette allegedly struck up the long-distance romance, prompting her to send money and pricey gifts such as Giorgio Armani shirts and gold necklaces in exchange for promises that he would soon divorce his wife and marry her. She sent him birthday flowers and candy on Valentine’s Day, along with the lingerie for their supposed honeymoon, and even homemade cakes and cookies, authorities say.

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At one point, the woman flew to Los Angeles in an unsuccessful effort to see Biehn. After being stood up at the airport, she went to the address where she sent her letters--the home of Biehn’s manager, Christopher Murphy--but was rebuffed by both him and Biehn’s agent, the documents say. She returned home, believing the relationship was over.

(Prosecutors say neither Murphy nor Biehn was aware of Myette’s relationship with the woman.)

Weeks later, after receiving several rueful letters from her Hollywood pen pal, the mother of two daughters started up the gifts and the romance again.

Soon, the documents allege, Myette’s ruses to solicit cash became more outlandish--going from claims that he needed cash to pay off expensive divorce lawyers and then bury his suddenly “dead” wife, to needing to square up a gambling debt owed to East Coast mobsters who were threatening to kill him.

All the while, authorities say, the alleged con artist was living with a girlfriend he plans to marry this month. Myette allegedly boasted about the scam, showing the victim’s semi-nude photographs to mechanics at a Beverly Hills garage where he had his car serviced.

“When she got the news, she physically collapsed,” said Charlotte Blasier, a Sacramento private investigator the woman hired once she became suspicious. “She was more than devastated, she was an emotional basket case.

“In one split second, she went from being engaged to an affluent actor to whom she had entrusted her very private personal secrets and had sent her life savings, to learning she was the unknowing victim of a coldblooded scam.”

Myette has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled for an Aug. 27 court appearance in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H. His attorney, George Gormley, said: “My client looks forward to straightening this all out.”

Los Angeles police say “sweetheart” scams are relatively common but more often involve con men impersonating harder-to-recognize professional football players instead of actors.

“This guy sounds like a real fast talker, which is pretty common for these types,” said bunco forgery Det. Greg Schwien. “If these guys were salesmen, they could make a million bucks. And many of them do--illegally.”

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Myette’s arrest has prompted many to ask how the woman could have been allegedly duped for so long.

“Why would some housewife fool herself into thinking she’s part of some real-life version of ‘Pretty Woman?’ ” asked the owner of the Beverly Hills car repair shop that Myette frequented, who said Myette bragged to him about the scheme.

“She thinks some rich actor is going to drop his wife to sweep her off her feet and take her away from her boring middle-class life,” added the man, who asked that his name not be used.

But Blasier defends her client’s errors as merely human.

“It happens a million times a day: Pen pals correspond and send photographs without having met in person,” she said. “Here, a man writes a woman and tells her everything she wants to hear. He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s melted his heart. She’s the woman of his dreams. Who wouldn’t want to believe that?”

Blasier likened the checks to money that viewers send to television evangelists. “They believe what they’re told, so what’s the difference? Does it make them stupid? No. Naive? Maybe. I feel sorry for every one of them,” she said.

Los Angeles psychologist Robert Butterworth said the alleged victim became prey to her own fantasy.

“Some people create such an unshakable dream world for themselves that no matter what reality throws at them, they bat it right back,” he said. “Common sense played no role here. My question is: Where were her friends when she needed them?”

The dream began in August 1994 when the woman sent a package to Biehn containing her bra and panties “in order to get his attention,” according to court documents. Biehn opened the package at a party and then called the woman as a harmless prank, the documents say.

Neither Biehn nor his manager, Murphy, could be reached for comment, but officials say Biehn never again spoke or wrote to the woman.

The 41-year-old Biehn, a married father of three, landed his first big acting role as an obsessed admirer of Lauren Bacall in the 1981 movie “The Fan.” He has since been in 21 films, most notably in the role of Kyle Reese, a determined soldier from the future who must save Linda Hamilton from a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator.”

At the time Biehn received the letter from the woman, authorities say, Myette was living in Murphy’s home, doing odd jobs, which sometimes included opening the fan mail. Myette and Murphy had met years earlier at a now-defunct Malibu motorized water ski dealership. After they met, Myette spent several months in jail for stealing doors from Jeep vehicles to support a cocaine habit, according to court documents.

Upon his release from jail, he moved in with Murphy.

Within weeks after Biehn phoned the woman, Myette allegedly wrote her and began calling late at night, authorities say. First, he asked for explicit photographs, but later began requesting clothing and other items, they say.

Eventually, along with about two dozen checks totaling $68,250, she sent him expensive shirts, cologne, chocolates, lingerie, a mug, candy hearts, flowers, jewelry and compact discs, and she baked for him regularly, the documents say.

“The first shirt she bought on sale for $15,” Blasier said. “But this guy writes back saying he’s allergic to regular material and could only handle $200 Armani shirts.”

Myette allegedly gave one Armani shirt to a mechanic to whom he showed the woman’s semi-nude photographs. “He was acting like a big shot, like he could give away expensive things she gave him, like he could always get more,” the mechanic said of Myette.

The mechanic said he and his co-workers at first thought the ruse was funny: “He just said she was some lady who thought he was Michael Biehn. At first we laughed, but then we realized that this isn’t funny anymore. He was scum. But there’s a lot of scum in this town.”

Eventually, Myette moved out of Murphy’s home and allegedly asked the woman to write him at a Hollywood address--a post office box. In 1995, Myette and his girlfriend moved to Nashua, N.H., where he began selling cars at the dealership at which his future mother-in-law worked.

But the letters to his Sacramento “sweetheart” continued, according to the documents. The missives asked that checks be sent in the name of Biehn’s “good friend” Mike Myette due to what letters called Biehn’s messy divorce. The letters explained the actor’s supposed move to New England by saying Biehn had a film shoot there and wanted to be closer to his ailing mother.

Private investigator Blasier said the woman became suspicious when her sweetheart kept dodging possible meetings while asking for more and more money--including the bogus story of needing $3,500 to get bailed out of jail in Michigan following his arrest after “Charlie Sheen left a bag of marijuana under his car seat.”

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The last letter, dated Feb. 14, 1997, asked for $4,000 that would eventually be repaid after the actor received money from a movie deal with Paramount Studios supposedly made in both their names, according to a copy of the missive furnished by Blasier, who said it was written by Myette. The letter also contained a promise that the woman would receive a wedding ring owned by the actor’s grandmother.

“Honey no questions no nothing because this has to be done and I’m on way home to uuuuuuu,” the letter said.

It ended: “I love you soooo much. I want u to bear our children. I will answer all your questions when we are together please hurry. Love, Michael B. Your hubby.”

By early spring, after she had quit her job, emptied her savings and retirement plans, and saddled her mother with numerous loans, the woman went to the private investigator. “I asked her if she had any evidence,” Blasier recalled, “and she told me she was embarrassed to say it but she had lied to her chosen future husband.

“She said he had made her promise to destroy all the letters. ‘But I’ve saved them all,’ she said. And I said, ‘Bingo!’ ”

Blasier said the woman has landed another job and is trying to move on with her life.

“It’s hard for her,” the investigator said. “She feels like she’s buried her husband.”