Joey Fatone has revealed a bizarre encounter with a fan who attempted to scam him into believing he was the father of her child—a scheme that ultimately unraveled thanks to a poorly forged birth certificate.
The former *NSYNC star, now 49, shared the story in the documentary Boy Band Confidential, explaining that the incident left him wary of getting close to fans.
According to Fatone, the woman first showed up at his parents' house while he was on tour. "My dad opens up the door, and there's a young girl standing there and she goes, 'Hi, my name is such and such. That's your son's daughter,'" he recalled.
His parents, frantic, called him immediately. The woman then got on the phone, claiming she didn't want money and that they had met before. Fatone remembered meeting her after *NSYNC's first-ever performance in 1996. "We met, we hung out, we had a great time that night, and then I hadn't seen her since," he said. "I'm thinking to myself, 'My career is over. Somebody's telling me I have a kid. Is it my kid?'"
The situation escalated when, after Fatone returned home from tour, the woman filed a paternity lawsuit, demanding a blood test. She even produced a birth certificate with both their names and a footprint. "My mother's losing her mind," Fatone said.
But the forgery gave itself away. "The font was in one type and then my name was in a completely different type font and you can see that it was white out on it," he explained. "The woman was just making the whole thing up."
The ordeal changed his relationship with fans forever. "That's not what I signed up for," he said.