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PRIMETIME
Air Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Time Slot: 9:00 PM-11:00 PM EST on ABC
Episode Title: "Secrets & Lies: An American Imposter"
[NOTE: The following article is a press release issued by the aforementioned network and/or company. Any errors, typos, etc. are attributed to the original author. The release is reproduced solely for the dissemination of the enclosed information.]

�SECRETS & LIES: THE AMERICAN IMPOSTER�

Martin Bashir Investigates One Man�s Life of Deception in a �Primetime� Special, Tuesday, July 11 on ABC

How much do we know about the people in our lives? About the truth of what they say and who they really are? For the people in Christopher Buckingham�s life, the answers to those questions are shocking. ABC News presents a mystery special about an American man who lived a life of deception for more than 20 years in England, where his wife, children and friends knew him as Lord Buckingham. In a two-hour investigation, Martin Bashir goes in search of the conman who fooled the world, uncovering how he deceived so many for so long. �Secrets & Lies: The American Imposter� airs on �Primetime,� TUESDAY, JULY 11 (9:00-11:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.

For more than two decades Christopher Buckingham claimed to be a British aristocrat � a Lord. He told everyone that he�d been educated at Cambridge University and was sitting on an inheritance worth millions of dollars. He married, had two children and pursued a successful career in computer systems. He had all the trappings of an upper class Englishman.

But the reality was that he was a poor boy from Orlando, Florida, one of nine children who was left destitute when his father walked out on the family. After his mother begged for help in a local Florida newspaper, the humiliation was too much for her eldest son. He soon left home and started a new life in Great Britain -- with a new name and a new identity that he�d stolen from a dead baby. He secured the UK version of a Social Security number and was soon living as a British citizen.

He managed to live his new life until last year� when a routine border check at a ferry crossing between England and France showed a problem with his passport. He was arrested by police, who started a criminal investigation. But after conducting a ten-month long worldwide search, they were unable to find any information about his life pre-1983. He was found guilty of passport fraud and sent to prison.

Then, suddenly, an incredible coincidence led to a breakthrough. His original family in Florida collided with his new family in Britain via the internet. Neither knew of the other�s existence � Now they would meet and find the truth they�d all been searching for.

Bashir gains exclusive access to the police investigation and follows the families on both sides of the Atlantic as they come together. In a disarming series of confrontations, there is neither bitterness nor recrimination � but forgiveness and redemption for the man who deceived them all.

Rob Wallace is the producer of "Secret & Lies: The American Imposter.� David Sloan is the executive producer.

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