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IM-015 Impostor · New York 1983

David Hampton — a con man who played Sidney Poitier’s son

impersonationpolicerecognition1970-1999
The persona
David Poitier, the actor Sidney Poitier's son
Fooled
Manhattan's wealthy, cultured, and well-connected
Unmasked
Cross-checked stories, a repeat appearance, and a guest discovered in bed
Status
Convicted

Summary

In New York City in the early 1980s, a young man named David Hampton talked his way into the homes, wallets, and dinner tables of some of Manhattan's most cultured and affluent residents by claiming to be the son of the actor Sidney Poitier. He was not. Hampton, born in Buffalo in 1964, would appear at a prosperous family's door, often disheveled and claiming to have been mugged or to have lost his luggage, present himself as "David Poitier," a friend of the family's college-age children, and ask to stay the night. Several well-known New Yorkers took him in before the act collapsed. He was arrested and, in 1983, convicted of fraud and ordered to make restitution of roughly $4,500; when he failed to comply with the terms, he served time in prison. His exploits became the basis for John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation and its 1993 film adaptation.

Hampton's con was small in money and large in meaning. The sums involved were modest — a few thousand dollars, some free meals, a series of free nights — but the people he fooled were precisely those who prided themselves on sophistication: a former Newsweek editor and Columbia journalism dean, the head of a public-television station, figures from the arts and media. The deception worked because Hampton understood that a borrowed famous name, delivered with the right manners and a few plausible personal details, switches off the scrutiny that the same strangers would apply to an ordinary visitor.

The mechanism was social proof manufactured from a single false premise. By presenting himself as both a celebrity's child and a friend of his hosts' own children at elite schools, Hampton placed himself inside two trusted circles at once, so that each host assumed someone else had already vetted him. He flattered his targets' self-image — open-minded, well-connected, hospitable — and that flattery did more work than any document could have, because to doubt him was to seem unworldly or unkind.

The verdict was a conviction, but the figure outlived it. Hampton pursued and harassed the playwright who had dramatized him, demanding a share of the proceeds, and was acquitted of harassment. He never repeated the success of his original con and died of AIDS-related complications in 1983's long shadow, in 2003, at the age of thirty-nine.

Timeline

28 April 1964
Hampton is born in Buffalo, New York
He would later move to New York City and adopt a series of aliases.
1983
The Studio 54 gambit
Denied entry to the nightclub, Hampton and a companion pose as the sons of Sidney Poitier and Gregory Peck and are admitted as celebrities — a template for what follows.
1983
The "David Poitier" persona matures
Hampton uses the celebrity-son identity to obtain free meals and to talk his way into wealthy homes, claiming friendship with his hosts' children.
October 1983
The Elliott household
Osborn Elliott and Inger McCabe Elliott take in "David Poitier" for the night after the familiar story of a mugging or lost luggage.
October 1983
The morning discovery
Inger McCabe Elliott finds Hampton with another man in their home, the family realizes the deception, and the police are called.
1983
A pattern emerges
Other prominent New Yorkers recognize that the same young "David Poitier" had imposed on them, and the cross-checking of stories exposes the persona.
October 1983
Arrest and conviction
Hampton is convicted of fraud and ordered to pay restitution of about $4,469.
1983–1984
Imprisonment
After refusing to abide by the conditions tied to the restitution, Hampton serves a prison term.
May 1990
The play opens
John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, inspired by Hampton's con, premieres in New York and becomes a critical and commercial success.
Early 1990s
Hampton turns on the playwright
Demanding a share of the play's earnings, he harasses Guare and threatens him; he is tried and acquitted of harassment.
1993
The film adaptation
A screen version of Six Degrees of Separation, with Will Smith as the con man, reaches a national audience.
18 July 2003
Death
Hampton dies of AIDS-related complications at a Manhattan medical center, aged thirty-nine.

A borrowed name at the door

David Hampton's persona was assembled from a single, potent borrowing: the surname of Sidney Poitier, then among the most admired and respected actors in America and a figure of particular standing in liberal, cultured circles. To be Poitier's son was to carry, instantly, an aura of glamour, dignity, and assumed good breeding — and, crucially, an explanation for being unknown, since a famous man's private child could plausibly move among the elite without anyone having met him before.

The earliest public version of the act was almost a lark. In 1983, refused entry to Studio 54, Hampton and a friend reportedly claimed to be the sons of Poitier and Gregory Peck and were waved inside as celebrities. The lesson he drew was that the right name, confidently asserted, opened doors that money or argument could not. He scaled it up. As "David Poitier" he secured free meals in restaurants, sometimes by claiming his father would be joining him and then performing the disappointment of being stood up, and he began arriving at the homes of well-off Manhattan families. The approach was consistent: he would appear in some plausible distress — robbed in the park, separated from his luggage, having just missed a flight to Los Angeles — and explain that he was a friend of the family's son or daughter from Harvard or another elite school. The distress justified the imposition; the school connection justified the trust.

The sophisticates who wanted to believe

The roster of those who extended Hampton hospitality reads as a directory of cultured New York: Osborn Elliott, the former editor of Newsweek and dean of Columbia's journalism school, and his wife Inger McCabe Elliott; the head of a public broadcasting station; figures from film and the arts. These were not naive marks. They were people whose identities rested on being discerning and well-connected, and that self-image was the very lever Hampton pulled.

His genius was to manufacture social proof from nothing. By claiming to be both a famous man's son and a friend of his hosts' own children, he inserted himself into two presumptively vetted circles at once. Each host reasoned, in effect, that a young man who knew their child and carried so distinguished a name must already have been vouched for by someone; the burden of verification was quietly assumed to rest elsewhere. The borrowed celebrity flattered the hosts as much as it impressed them: to receive Sidney Poitier's son, to be the sophisticated New Yorker who could take such a guest in stride, confirmed exactly the cosmopolitan self-conception these targets valued. Under that flattery, the ordinary questions — How exactly do you know my daughter? Where are you actually staying? — felt gauche, even bigoted, and went unasked. Hampton offered, with each visit, a small piece of cultural fluency or name-dropped acquaintance that made the whole improbable structure feel familiar.

The morning the act collapsed

What undid Hampton was not a forensic test but the simple friction of repetition and proximity. A con built on being a stranger who knows your children cannot survive the moment two hosts compare notes, and as more prominent families realized that the same "David Poitier" had passed through their homes with the same story, the singular charming guest resolved into a pattern of fraud.

The decisive episode came in October 1983 at the apartment of Osborn and Inger McCabe Elliott. Having taken the young man in for the night on the strength of the usual tale, Inger McCabe Elliott discovered him the next morning in bed with another man — a guest she had never agreed to house and a fact that punctured the carefully managed impression of a well-bred family friend. The Elliotts grasped that they had been deceived and called the police. Their outrage, and the comparison of experiences among Hampton's various hosts, drove the case forward. He was charged and, in 1983, convicted of fraud and ordered to repay roughly $4,469 to those he had swindled. He declined to meet the conditions attached to that restitution and served a prison term as a result. The money at stake was trivial; what the conviction recorded was that an entire stratum of sophisticated New York had been moved by a name and a manner alone, with no one ever asking the famous father, or the supposed school friends, whether any of it was true.

The Five Factors

01
The off-the-shelf prestige of a borrowed name
Hampton did not build a reputation; he rented one. Attaching himself to Sidney Poitier imported, in a single sentence, glamour, respectability, and a ready reason for being a stranger. A famous surname functions as instant, unexamined credentials, and the more admired the name, the less anyone feels entitled to question the claim attached to it.
02
Fabricated social proof
By posing simultaneously as a celebrity's son and a friend of his hosts' children, Hampton placed himself inside two trusted networks at once, so each party assumed the other had vetted him. Belonging that is merely asserted, and never independently confirmed by anyone, can pass for belonging that has been earned.
03
Flattery as anesthetic
The con rewarded its targets' self-image as worldly, open-minded, and well-connected. To welcome Poitier's son was to be the kind of person one wished to be, and that pleasure suppressed the impulse to verify. A pitch that flatters the mark disarms the mark.
04
The distress alibi
Each arrival came wrapped in a sympathetic emergency — a mugging, lost luggage, a missed flight — that converted scrutiny into rudeness. Manufactured vulnerability makes asking obvious questions feel cruel, and an impostor who appears to need help is rarely asked to prove he deserves it.
05
The unmade phone call
No host ever simply contacted Sidney Poitier, or the children Hampton claimed as friends, to confirm a word of it. The entire structure rested on the assumption that someone else had already checked, when no one had. The cheapest verification — a single direct inquiry to the named authority — was the one step the deception could not survive, and the one no one took.

Aftermath

Hampton's con left almost no financial wreckage but a long cultural wake. John Guare, a friend of the Elliotts, transformed the episode into Six Degrees of Separation, which opened in 1990 and became one of the most acclaimed American plays of its era, followed by a 1993 film in which Will Smith played the con man. The work outgrew its source: Guare used Hampton's intrusion as a meditation on connection, class, and the longing to matter, and the title entered ordinary speech. Hampton, for his part, came to believe the success was partly his and pursued Guare for a share of the proceeds, harassing and threatening the playwright before being tried and acquitted of harassment.

He never matched his original feat again. The borrowed-celebrity gambit depended on a pre-internet world in which a stranger's claim to be a famous man's son could not be checked in seconds, and on a social code that made interrogating a charming, distressed guest feel beneath one's dignity. Both conditions have since eroded. Hampton died in 2003, aged thirty-nine, of AIDS-related complications, his name preserved less for the con itself than for the durable phrase the play built on top of it. The case survives as a clean demonstration that prestige and sympathy, not evidence, are what most often open a door — and that the simplest confirming call is the defense people are most reluctant to make.

Lessons

  1. Treat a borrowed famous name as a reason for more scrutiny, not less; the prestige that impresses you is exactly what the impostor is renting.
  2. Confirm claimed connections directly with the named source — call the supposed parent or friend — rather than assuming someone else already has.
  3. Recognize that flattery of your own sophistication or open-mindedness is a tool; the better a stranger makes you feel about yourself, the more carefully verify the stranger.
  4. Do not let manufactured distress — a mugging, lost luggage, a missed flight — buy a pass on basic questions; sympathy and verification are not in conflict.
  5. Compare notes; a con that depends on being an unknown friend-of-the-family dissolves the moment two hosts speak to each other.

References