The NSYNC member explained that the woman was trying to earn cash by selling photos of him going to take a paternity test.

Joey Fatone says woman once claimed he fathered her child as part of paternity scam: ‘My career is over’

The NSYNC member explained that the woman was trying to earn cash by selling photos of him going to take a paternity test.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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April 28, 2026 2:33 p.m. ET

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Joey Fatone posing at a SiriusXM event. Credit:

Gary Gershoff/Getty

- Joey Fatone is looking back at the time when a woman once falsely claimed that he was the father of her child.

- The NSYNC member said the woman showed up at his parents' doorstep and hit him with a paternity lawsuit.

- However, Fatone discovered that the woman made the entire thing up and was trying to earn money by selling photos of him getting a paternity test taken.

Joey Fatone is looking back at the time when a woman once falsely claimed that he was the father of her child.

The 49-year-old NSYNC star opened up about being the victim of a paternity scam in the third episode of ID’s *Boy Band Confidential* docuseries, revealing that the incident occurred when he was just 23 years old and on tour with his fellow bandmates.

"I had one girl that came to my parents’ house when I was on the road. Knocked on the door, my dad opens up the door, and there's a young girl standing there and she goes, ‘Hi, my name is such and such. That's your son's daughter,’” Fatone, who is also an executive producer on the series, recalled. “My dad's like, ‘What? I’m sorry?’”

The “Bye Bye Bye” singer explained that his mom quickly called him and got him caught up on the situation.

“My mom's hysterical crying going, ‘There's a woman here that says this is your daughter. I don't even know what to say, but here, you can talk to her,’” he said. “She puts her on the phone… she's like, ‘Hey, I'm such and such. I don't want any money. We met a while back.’”

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Fatone confirmed that he’d met the woman before at “the first performance we ever did as NSYNC” in 1996.

“We met, we hung out, we had a great time that night, and then I hadn't seen her since,” he said. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘My career is over. Somebody's telling me I have a kid. Is it my kid?’”

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The woman didn’t take legal action against him, however, until Fatone returned home from tour.

"All of a sudden, I get slapped with a paternity lawsuit, saying that I need to go in with this woman to do a blood test,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden, I get a piece of paper with a birth certificate with her name, my name on it, the footprint, all of it. My mother's losing her mind.”

But Fatone had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right about the paperwork. "The font was in one type and then my name was in a completely different type [of] font and you can see that it was white out on it," he said. "The woman was just making the whole thing up.”

NSYNC performs at the 2013 MTV VMAs.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Her plan quickly fell apart. “Basically, she wanted me to get a paternity test, take a photo of all of us walking into it so she would get paid… by whoever wanted to list the story,” Fatone said. “And that was the only reason why.”

The scam had a serious impact on how he views fan interactions to this day. “It affected everything of how I deal with fans in general,” he said. “That’s not what I signed up for.”

Fatone would go on to start his own family years later, welcoming daughters Briahna, 25, and Kloey, 16, with his ex-wife Kelly Baldwin.

The *Boy Band Confidential* docuseries is available to stream on HBO Max.

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