Dude Mistakes Real Life For A Soap Opera, Sends Lookalike To Take His Paternity Test

A British man who apparently mistook real life for an episode of Jane the Virgin–which is a spectacular show, by the way–impressed a courtroom full of people with both his awfulness and his stupidity when it was revealed that he tried to dodge a paternity suit by hiring a lookalike to take his DNA test for him.

According to The Daily Mail, 25-year-old Thomas Kenny already had two children by his long-term girlfriend when he accidentally impregnated the woman with whom he was cheating on his partner. He reportedly tried to get the woman to have an abortion, but she refused, at which point he allegedly started denying the baby was his. He clearly knew it was his, though, because when ordered to take a DNA test he actually sent a guy who kind of looked like him to take the test in his place.

This is just the weirdest, most balls-out crazy idea a person could have. Even professional lookalikes don’t tend to look all that much like the person they’re impersonating, and Kenny just sent a random dude who sort of matched his description. It is unclear who took the DNA test, but it might have been one of Kenny’s coworkers. (Let’s give a wag of the finger to the coworker who would get involved with this situation, because that is not the action of a stand-up guy either.)

Kenny was caught, of course. A DNA test of the two children he already has proved that the third baby is also his, and a judge was flabbergasted by the extent of Kenny’s attempted fraud.

“This case shows you were prepared to disown a child for your own for financial gain. Morally, you cannot sink lower than that,” said Judge Philip Barker QC.

Kenny has been convicted of fraud for attempting to pull off his terribly stupid DNA test stunt, at which point the judge told him that he was the “author of his own misfortunes,” which is both a poetic turn of phrase and an enormous understatement.

Now that Kenny has been forced to be responsible for his third child, one can only hope things turn out OK for that kid, and that she never, ever googles her father’s name.

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