In September 1998, Frédéric Bourdin pleaded guilty in a San Antonio federal court and was sentenced to six years in federal prison.

It was the longest sentence he had received to that point in his career as an impostor.

He served his time and was deported back to France.

And then, with a consistency that is both fascinating and disturbing, he continued.

In 2005, Bourdin was caught once again in Spain, this time attempting to impersonate a young orphan from Castille.

He was thirty years old at the time — an age at which the pretense of being a troubled teenager required increasingly creative explanation.

He was briefly detained and released.