A sufficiently sophisticated impostor could potentially exploit gaps in any verification system.

But they make the specific failure mode of the Barclay case — a fraudulent identity maintained for sixteen months in the face of obvious physical discrepancies — significantly less likely to recur.

Bourdin’s Own Words About What Drove Him

In various interviews over the years, Frédéric Bourdin has spoken about his motivations — about what drove him to spend decades impersonating missing and abandoned teenagers, and specifically what drove him to the Barclay case.

His accounts are consistent in some ways and inconsistent in others, which is what you would expect from a person who is both genuinely reflective about his past and also consistently strategic in how he presents himself.