Actor, football manager, chef and boyfriend - Matthew Carroll has had many guises.

A BBC investigation has uncovered an extraordinary web of deception one man is alleged to have spun across the UK over the past five years, leaving dozens of people collectively claiming to be almost £50,000 out of pocket.

Those who spoke to the BBC say Matthew Carroll's trail of deceit, including claims he had landed a starring role in a Marvel film and was seriously ill, have left them questioning who they can trust. They now want to warn others.

Carroll has not responded to any of the allegations.

The BBC is not using the surnames of those making allegations against Carroll, to protect their identities.

Late one night in September 2023, a group of friends sat on the floor of a Sheffield flat piecing together a ripped-up letter that they'd found in the bedroom of their housemate, Matthew Carroll.

It was from a loan company, requesting repayment of more than £1,300 - but it wasn't addressed to Carroll.

It was found alongside a bank card in one of their friend's names - which they never knew existed - a card in his girlfriend's name, and a stack of letters from creditors chasing debts in excess of £16,000.

His flatmate, Greg, who says he was also Carroll's best friend, had grown suspicious after bills went unpaid by Carroll, despite him claiming the business they were running together, Huntsman Media, was thriving.

Greg had paid £2,500 into the business account. Earlier that September evening he had confronted Carroll, asking to see proof that money he and others had transferred was still there, but says Carroll "basically refused".

"That's the last conversation I ever had with him," Greg adds.

After Carroll left the flat he was never seen again by his Sheffield friends.

A group chat between them began, warning each other to check their own credit history, following the discovery.

Greg says he found more than 18 credit searches had been carried out without him knowing, which he believes were made by Carroll after sharing his passport information with him.

The BBC has heard from seven others who say their names have been used for credit searches, loan applications or to open bank accounts, without their knowledge.

The common link? All had shared their personal details with Carroll.

Several of them are among 12 people who gave their passport information, addresses and full or partial £1,000 deposits to Carroll after he invited them to be part of a play just off New York's Broadway - which never happened.

Some received their money back, but many say they didn't.

Past friends describe Carroll as charismatic, ambitious and someone people wanted to be around.

As a performing arts student at Sheffield Hallam University in 2021, he immersed himself in the theatre scene, acting and directing productions.

Following trips to London, friends said he painted a picture of a life on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Greg says Matt told him after months of auditions that he had landed a part in the next Marvel film.

"He told us how much he was gonna be making, which was in the millions."

Carroll's friends say he shared stories of schmoozing A-listers including Timothée Chalamet, screen-testing alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Holland, and turning down Holland's invite to watch football together.

Greg says he and others believed the stories because they were "too stupid to make up".

" I completely and utterly fell for it - hook, line, and sinker," he adds.

Over time, Carroll's stories became more serious. Friends say Carroll told them a family member had attempted suicide, but the BBC has seen a message suggesting this was a lie.

Dan, a fellow drama student and co-founder of Huntsman Media, says he grew suspicious when a letter from Natwest arrived demanding he pay back £2,000 in debt on an account he never knew he had.

He says Carroll assured him it was an error after he had set up an expenses account in Dan's name. Carroll showed him a screenshot of an email from the debt recovery firm, Moorcroft, which confirmed the "error" and said "no funds are owed".

Moorcroft told the BBC it had no record of the email being sent and Dan believes the screenshot he was shown was "fake."

Fearing bailiffs, Dan repaid the money, but his bank refused to reimburse him, saying the signature matched its records. Dan denies signing it.

After Carroll disappeared from Sheffield, he continued to seek investors for Huntsman Media.

Former schoolfriend Dom transferred more than £5,000 in savings and also took out a personal loan of £7,000 to invest in shares in the company, which he says Carroll helped him to apply for, with the agreement Carroll would pay him back in monthly instalments.

But after a few months the repayments stopped.

Dom says whenever he pressed Carroll he claimed he was having a "major breakdown" and stopped answering texts and phone calls - a pattern seen by others who spoke to the BBC.

Dom continued to repay the loan until 2028, totalling £11,000 after interest. He says he doesn't expect to recover the money but "would like to see some form of justice, because clearly [Carroll] is willing to do this to anybody, and that includes his friends".

When the BBC sought to verify a theatre contract sent to Dom by Carroll, the company confirmed no agreement was in place.

"I can pick up on liars much better now, which probably is a little bit of a positive from it," says Ryan, who hired Carroll as a sous chef at a Derbyshire pub in April 2024.

The pair worked together for nine months before the pub changed hands and all the kitchen staff left.

A couple of months later, Carroll rented the kitchen of a pub near Chesterfield, and invited Ryan and several other former colleagues to work for him after reassuring them he could afford a full team.

Ryan says Carroll quickly appeared out of his depth, and asked him for a £2,000 loan to buy a new oven, which he refused.

"It went from being paid weekly to monthly," Ryan says.

"He always said he had an issue with his bank account."

Shortly after, Ryan's phone flooded with notifications after a Facebook post was shared by an alleged victim of Carroll's saying he had "lied, manipulated [and] scammed".

"It all sort of just hit you at once," says Ryan.

Colleagues and suppliers realised they were collectively owed more than £5,000 in unpaid wages and bills.

When Ryan confronted Carroll he says his response to the post was: "They're lying."

Ryan has accepted that he is unlikely to recover the money.

Early in 2024, Carroll joined the grassroots football club Dronfield Wanderers in Derbyshire, playing as well as joining the committee and eventually taking over as manager.

After successfully arranging a couple of nights out, he proposed an end-of-season trip to Germany.

Players paid Carroll more than £3,000 in deposits for the planned trip to Stuttgart, where he claimed to have arranged a match with a local club.

As the trip approached, details were sketchy. Players say Carroll blamed the pressures of running a kitchen but shared screenshots to prove what he'd booked.

As concerns grew some players say they began double-checking bookings. One hotel reservation showed only a single room booking for more than 20 men, and a travel company told them it had only provided a quote and not booked the trip, as the email suggested.

The trip never went ahead.

The players recovered their deposits after a series of confrontations with Carroll, and in messages to one team-mate, seen by the BBC, Carroll later admitted guilt, texting: "I need help" and adding: "it did start out genuine then went south and I got caught in a web" and "I admit to being in the wrong completely".

In May 2025, Beth matched with Carroll on a dating app, who she says seemed "charming" and "sweet".

After exchanging up to 40 messages a day, the pair met in Manchester, where Carroll paid for "everything" and "seemed really open and genuine".

Soon after, Carroll asked to borrow £50 after claiming the hotel hadn't returned his deposit and was "facing a two-hour walk home in the dark".

On another weekend away together which Carroll paid for, Beth says he helped her secure a £3,000 loan after he said he'd worked for a bank.

"He literally had my laptop and was filling out all the forms for me," she says.

After she got the loan, he began asking her for more money as a stop-gap between pay cheques, until one day she realised the debts had slowly mounted to £1,395.

But whenever Beth asked for repayment, she says she was met by excuses, including one message which read "turns out my condition is more sinister than they thought".

Beth isn't the only alleged victim to say Carroll leaned on stories about poor health when they started to ask for their money back.

He eventually ended their relationship.

She was hit "like a ton of bricks" when she searched Carroll's name on social media and found a post from another alleged victim.

Beth, who lives in Huddersfield, is one of the few people who got her money back. But she says it took eight months of repeatedly chasing Carroll.

"I was so angry, and I think a lot of that fuelled me, and I wasn't bothered about being embarrassed," she says.

"He's been so many different people since he was a kid, that the real Carroll is buried under a wall covered under 100 layers of paint," she adds.

"It's like he doesn't exist any more. He is just all the masks."

Two other former partners have told the BBC they collectively loaned Carroll more than £7,500 which they say has never been repaid.

In spring 2026, Carroll began advertising himself as a wedding caterer in the Suffolk area, and Janet signed him up for her son's wedding.

The day before the ceremony, Carroll failed to arrive, citing a flat tyre, but promised to be there the following morning. He never showed up.

With only hours to spare, Janet was left calling friends and family to buy food, organise drinks and dress the venue.

Janet, from Suffolk, managed to get some of the money back, but almost £500 remains outstanding.

Janet, and another customer of Carroll's who lost money, reported Carroll to Report Fraud, but were told there were "insufficient lines of enquiry" to investigate.

A Report Fraud spokesperson confirmed they had not passed the report to a police force to investigate but would review it if further reports were made.

They added that reports are assessed against criteria and "unfortunately not every case will be sent to law enforcement" but that they can give specialist advice and help people to recover losses in other ways.

If it is proven that a person took out a credit card, loan or did credit checks in someone else's name, this could amount to fraud by false representation. This can be a criminal offence and could lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. It could also expose a person to a civil claim from the person whose identity was used.

The BBC has identified more than 30 people who say they lost a combined £58,000 to Carroll, although in some of those cases he did make full or partial payments back, amounting to £9,321.

Evidence suggests a further six people may have lost a total of about £10,000, although the BBC has been unable to independently verify those claims.

The BBC is aware of further alleged victims.

But for many, the financial losses tell only part of the story.

For footballer Jamie, he says it's left him and others questioning their judgement of character and who they can trust.

"He definitely manipulated me. I opened up to him about my own problems, thinking, 'Oh, he's actually all right'. I think that was just all a lie."

Social media has also played a big part in uniting many of the alleged victims.

"Realising I wasn't alone was so much more comforting than I ever thought," says Beth.

Dr Elisabeth Carter, criminologist at Kingston University, says Carroll's "face-to face deceptions" without the usual "cloak of anonymity" that comes with online scamming makes his case "rare" and "quite extraordinary".

She says the underlying motivation by "face-to-face" scammers was often not about making money, but about chasing a sense of purpose.

"Even if you end up being found out at the end of it, for that short moment in time, you're important."

She says claiming illness is a " recognised part of the scripts" that a scammer would use as a way to distract a victim asking for their money back.

Dr Carter says those whose money was returned are still victims and should report it as the "wide-ranging impacts" are not just financial and can include losing trust in people and feeling afraid of leaving the house.

Carroll did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Some people reported Carroll to South Yorkshire Police three years ago but he has not faced action and other alleged victims have come forward since then.

Those who reported their experiences said they were frustrated by the lack of action from police.

One alleged victim, who believes Carroll applied for credit in her name, said South Yorkshire Police called her a year after she reported Carroll for fraud, to arrange for a statement to be taken - but that never happened and she has heard nothing since. Others say they have never received a call back.

South Yorkshire Police declined to comment.

Dom said while authorities fail to act, the group of Carroll's alleged victims "just gets bigger".