InLalalaletmeexplain'shit column, readers ask for her expert advice on their own love, sex and relationship problems.
With over 200k Instagram followers, Lala is the anonymous voice helping womankind through every bump in the road. An established sex, dating and relationship educator, she’s had her fair share of relationship drama and shares her wisdom on social media to a loyal army of followers. Every week thousands turn to her to answer their questions (no matter how embarrassing), and her funny, frank approach to love and relationships has made her the ultimate feel-good guru.
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Dear Lala,
My friend is clearly being catfished and I don’t know what to do. She is 45 with three children, she was married until last year, but she left her husband because she fell for this catfish who she met online. The man messaging her says that he’s 26 and a personal trainer. They have been talking for nearly a year now but have never met in person as they live hundreds of miles away from each other.
There have been several attempts at meeting, but he cancels each time. One time before they were due to meet, she got a call from his friend saying he had been in a car accident and had to have major brain surgery. They have never face timed or even had a phone call. He has recently started sending voice notes though.
When she first told me I thought it was harmless, but it seems to have spiralled and she is totally invested in him, she even got a tattoo of his initials. Something I do find odd is that he has sent gifts to her house and money on PayPal. He isn’t asking her for money as far as I’m aware. But it worries me that he knows her address, especially as she has young children.
I’m also concerned because she has been added to a group chat with her ‘boyfriend’ and two of his friends and their girlfriends. This strikes me as very odd, why would you be in a group chat with these alleged couples who you’ve never met?
He has heaps of personal information on her and follows her social media where she posts pictures of her kids and the school they go to. His Instagram has 700 followers but zero posts. She is in very deep, and she has a very fiery personality, so, I worry about ruining our friendship by confronting the issue, but I’m so worried for her and her kids.
Lala says…
Everything about this sounds dodgy. He ticks all the boxes for textbook catfishing (pretending to be someone else online) – no video calls, wild excuses for why they can’t meet, no posts on social media, no phone calls. It all smacks of someone who is trying to hide something, most likely their own identity. The reasons why are less obvious but people in their late forties and older, divorcees and widows/widowers, are particularly vulnerable to being targeted on dating apps by con artists who want their money.
So called ‘Romance fraud’ is on the rise. Data from UK Finance shows a 20% increase in romance fraud during lockdown. Criminals groom their victims into believing that they are in a relationship, or at least falling for each other, before scamming them out of their money. They usually pretend there has been an emergency, or that a lack of money is preventing them from being able to meet. They can spend a long time grooming their victims before asking for anything, sometimes months or years, so their victim is lulled into a false sense of security and so that they are fully invested before they’re asked to part with cash.
It is curious that he has sent her money and gifts rather than the other way around. This may be a tactical way of ensuring that she trusts him, or it may be that he was fishing for personal information, bank/PayPal details, home address etc. Or it may indicate that he is catfishing for other reasons.
Sometimes catfishes are lonely, have low self-esteem, are full of self-loathing, and are simply creating a false persona because they don’t believe that anyone would fall for the reality. They truly do desire a connection, or an escape from their reality, they’re not trying to defraud anyone, but they use a false identity because they believe they will be rejected if they use their own.
My biggest concern would be him not being a catfish at all and instead being someone who is targeting a single mother for access to her children, but I wouldn’t worry about that unless there was evidence that he was asking for photos of them, building his own relationship with them, or having access to them in some way.
Adding your new 45-year-old girlfriend who you’ve never met into a couple’s group chat seems like a very strange move, we can only assume that he’s got five different phone numbers and he’s playing all the characters in the chat or that he’s part of a network of scammers. I guess there is also a very remote possibility that he is completely genuine, but I think that the red flags for catfishing are so strong that it would be very naïve to hang on to that possibility.
There is no reason why someone you are romantically involved in couldn’t manage to meet you within a year, and there is definitely no good reason to not have video calls.
Having said all that, I don’t actually think that there is much that you can do apart from tell her your concerns and why you are suspicious. She has been utterly brainwashed by this guy. He is offering her love, excitement, validation, and hope and she is clearly willing to ignore red flags in the pursuit of these things. He’s probably making her feel really good about herself. You are unlikely to be able to compete with that, or to be able to say anything that will cut through the fantasy that she has created of him.
If she is receptive, you could suggest that she puts his photo into Google for a reverse image search or tell her to watch ‘Catfish’ on MTV or ‘For Love or Money’ on BBC iplayer so that she can see the signs. It will probably take him doing something bad for her to see his true colours, after all – she’s in so deep that she left her own husband, for now all you can do is gently highlight some of the discrepancies when they arise, and hope that she sees sense soon.
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