The Imposter is a 2012 documentary film about the 1997 case of a French confidence trickster Frédéric Bourdin, who pretended to be Nicholas Patrick Barclay, an American boy who had disappeared in Texas at the age of 13 in 1994.

It mainly includes interviews with Bourdin but also with members of Barclay's family, as well as archive television news footage and reenacted dramatic sequences.

He then calls to another US agency claiming to be a Spanish official and asking to fax info on Nicholas.

This is done and begins a task of Bourdin trying to look like Nicholas, including getting matching tattoos and dying his hair blond.

Bourdin, who turned out to have a long record of impersonating various children, real or imaginary, embellished his claim to be Nicholas Barclay by alleging that he had been kidnapped for purposes of sexual abuse by Mexican, European and U.S. military personnel and transported from the US to Spain.

The impersonation was eventually discovered as a result of the suspicions of a private investigator, Charles (Charlie) Parker, and an FBI agent, Nancy Fisher.

In custody Bourdin tells the police that the family killed the real Nicholas and that is why they accepted him, as it hid the crime.