A man fooled a town in England into think he was their mayor by setting up a fake Twitter account.

A man going by James Billington created the Twitter handle @mayorofStafford with a bio saying he's, "delighted to be representing the town of Stafford & surrounding areas."


He sent his first tweet on March 8 and the people of Stafford quickly bought into it. Billington staged a ribbon-cutting at a local theme park and even passed around, "I'm the mayor of Stafford!" buttons. The Stafford town council caught on to the hoax and asked Twitter to shut the account down.

The real mayor is Angela Loughran and people were feeling a bit foolish for being duped.

"I feel so stupid, I believed [James Billington was mayor.] How many people know the name of their town mayor? there was no reason to disbelieve him," said Stafford resident Bal Singh.

The Twitter account is still active and tweeting his imaginary mayoral duties.

[HuffPost Live]