Did you hear? Patrick Mahomes visited Oak Park Mall last week. Oh, he raised quite a ruckus, walking through the food court with a bodyguard as shoppers grabbed their cellphones and yelled out at him. The boldest folks walked right up to the man with curly hair, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and asked for a picture. He “walked in American Outfitters,” one Chiefs fan wrote on Facebook, where they posted a photo of the three-time Super Bowl champ surrounded by shoppers. “Got lucky big security/couldn’t get closer.” Another fan of the quarterback lamented on Facebook that “I finally had a chance to see Patrick Mahomes at Oak Park Mall this afternoon and left my phone in my bf car. Shame on me.” Welp, she didn’t miss anything. That wasn’t Mahomes. That was a look-alike dude known on social media only as Z, or @zbo.nohomes on TikTok and zbo4lean on Instagram. He calls himself the “Walmart Pat Mahomes.” The fake Pat teamed up with prankster Victor Galvan — aka VicInTheGame on Instagram and YouTube — a “small town boi from Nebraska” and content creator with 53,000 followers on Instagram. Z’s assignment: walk through malls in Omaha and Kansas City to see what kind of chaos ensued.
“Today we’re going to be pranking the world with the fake Patrick Mahomes,” Galvan said to begin an eight-minute video posted to YouTube on Monday.
That means some people still might think they had the pleasure on Feb. 25 of meeting the Chiefs QB in the flesh — at the mall, in the food court, wearing a fake tan.
“What’s he doing here?” one of the pranksters asked a mall cop in Nebraska at the first stop they visited. “I don’t know,” she said nonchalantly. “Last year frickin’ Justin Bieber did the same thing.”
The prank began in Galvan’s stomping grounds of Omaha when he picked up Z at the airport. “We found him on TikTok and knew he would be the perfect person for this prank,” Galvan said in the video. Last summer Galvan caused near-stampedes near Los Angeles at the Orange County Fair when he sent a Bad Bunny impostor into the crowds.
Six months ago, he hired a fake Taylor Swift — L.A. actress Ashley Leechin, well-known as a dead ringer for the pop star — and five bodyguards to walk around L.A.’s Venice Beach, Universal Studios and Disneyland.
He caught mega heat from Swifties who were duped.
(The Swift stunt proved illuminating. In that video Galvan revealed he deals with anxiety and was struck that people asked fake Taylor for her picture but never asked how she was doing.)
‘LOVE YOU, PATRICK MAHOMES’
Galvan outfitted Z in Mahomes-like threads of stylishly ripped jeans and a hoodie. In the dressing room, fake Pat showed Galvan his Patrick walk — head cocked to one side then the other. They shoved lifts into his sneakers to make him taller. Galvan hired two beefy bodyguards and had friends act as fake, adoring fans, an unnecessary touch. They first hit Westroads Mall in Omaha, the state’s largest shopping center. “So let’s shut it down and cause some chaos,” Galvan said before the small entourage went inside. He provided commentary while watching the action on a video monitor in the car. Even before Z made it inside, two kids approached him, asking for selfies. “Yeah, yeah, you’re good, you’re good,” he told them. “Appreciate ya man, appreciate ya man,” he said, thanking them as Mahomes would.
Those two lines became his mantra as he repeated them dozens of times at both malls as fans swarmed him like bees to clover. In the parking lot, Galvan laughed as he watched shoppers surround the impostor outside Raising Cane’s in the mall. “My brothers are so obsessed with you,” one girl told him as she pushed close for a selfie. Fake Pat walked inside stores and, as he left one, found a mall security guard in a bright yellow jacket waiting outside. Busted? “Oh my God, that is bad,” Galvan said as he watched.
Nope. The mall cop wanted a selfie too, which she grabbed while someone nearby yelled out, “love you, Patrick Mahomes.” As the crowds grew bigger, Galvan, like a commander ordering a military extraction, urged the entourage to get out. “He has to leave, he has to leave,” he urged the bodyguards through their earpieces. Before they could make it to the exit, the security guard came back begging for just “one more, one more” selfie. As they rushed to the car some brazen kid yelled at the fake quarterback. “The 49ers shoulda won. The 49ers shoulda won. You got lucky.” “I never want to be famous,” one of the security guards said when they got to the car.
“Yeah, I know,” fake Pat said. “That was a lot of attention. I’m like, damn, this is what it’s like to be Mahomes?”
‘DIE-HARD FANS’
Galvan and Z drove two hours from Omaha to Overland Park for their next stop at Oak Park Mall. Galvan hired one security guard, a man who said he had worked for the real Mahomes, “and his girl and Travis and Taylor Swift.” He was impressed by Z. “He got the voice and everything,” he said.. Before they went in, Galvan slathered fake Pat with bronzer. “Since we are in the Red Kingdom, we had to go that extra mile and get him a spray tan,” Galvan said. “(Real Mahomes) is like a tone darker. We gonna be here, we gotta be spot on.” “Yeah,” said Z, “because there’s some die-hard fans …”
Once again, they didn’t even make it inside before a woman ran up to him, asked for a picture and admitted, “I’m just shaking.” Then kids ran up wanting pictures. Selfie session at the curb. “This has escalated too fast already, too fast. It hasn’t even started,” said Galvan, who decided to go inside this time to see the action firsthand. The walk through the food court began with a woman in a pink hoodie looking at fake Pat with shock and confusion as he walked past and saying aloud, “Mahomes?!”
He only got a few feet past her when someone stopped him for a selfie. Trying to keep things moving, he began telling people, “Walking picture, a walking picture.” When he stood still people crowded around. They yelled, “Yo! Hey Patrick! Hey Patrick!” They crowded along the second-floor railing to catch a glimpse. More yelling. “Patrick Mahomes!” In one store, he autographed a ball cap for a boy as his excited family took pictures. YouTube commenters felt sorry for the little fan because he obviously didn’t know the autograph was fake. Once again, the entourage had to make a quick getaway when the crowds got too big.
“OK, we gotta disappear, we gotta disappear,” Galvan said as they rushed toward the exit through Nordstrom. Little kids ran after them in the parking lot. Back in the car, Galvan sounded proud that “KC fell for it themselves.” Not so fast, prankster “boi.” As fake Pat rushed to the car at Oak Park Mall, a man shot video on his phone from the sidewalk saying aloud, “That’s Patrick Mahomes, y’all. The greatest. “Superman don’t play for Baltimore. Superman play for the Kansas City Chiefs.” But a woman next to him wondered out loud: “Why he only got one security guard?”
