Sywald Skeid (born Ciprian Skeid,[1] and also known by various other names, including Philip Staufen, Georges Lecuit, Keith Ryan, Mike Jones, and Mr. Nobody) (born 1971) is a Romanian-born man who wandered into a hospital emergency department in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on November 28, 1999, seemingly the victim of an attack, and apparently suffering from amnesia.
His real birthdate remains unknown, but in the June 2007 article in GQ Magazine in which his true identity and details of his early life were first revealed his age is given as 36.
Born in Timișoara, Romania,[1] where he lived until the age of nineteen, Skeid, who studied the violin, was named for famous composer Ciprian Porumbescu.
Skeid was released from hospital and stayed in a shelter for three weeks, then accepted an offer of lodging from an Ontario couple, and was able to collect welfare money.
Soon his photograph and fingerprints were being circulated internationally and he was the subject of television shows in Canada, Britain, and Australia, yet no clues as to his true identity were discovered.
In July, Spence provided photographs of Georges Lecuit to Detective Stephen Bone of Toronto Police, who had been working on the case.
In mid-July, Skeid married his lawyer's daughter Nathalie Herve, who had dual Canadian and Portuguese citizenship, in Vancouver, and accepted the Minister's Permit (backdated to July 5).
The following January, after Skeid's permit had expired, he and his wife moved to Ottawa, then Montreal, and then Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In mid-February 2004, it emerged that a French man named Georges Lecuit had reported his passport stolen in 1998.
Staufen was arrested and jailed, then released on condition that he report regularly to Immigration, which he last did on October 4, 2004, in Victoria, British Columbia.
In April 2005, a man matching Skeid's description was discovered wandering on a beach on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, wearing a dripping-wet suit and tie.