A MUM has told how she was catfished by a man pretending to be business owner.
Julie Haynes from Co Cork, Ireland decided to give dating apps a go after splitting up from the father of her two kids.
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She started chatting to who she thought was a builder living in Clare – but in reality she was speaking to an engaged man living in Newcastle.
She told RSVP Live: “There are some weirdos out there. I have heard some lovely stories about people meeting their boyfriends on Tinder or Bumble, and you can get lucky – but I haven’t been.
“So I was chatting to this lad and he was telling me his life story. He told me he was a builder, he had his own company and he had four or five lads working under him.
“He said he had moved to Cork from Clare because he wanted to expand his business in Cork.
“We were chatting away, I was thinking this guy really has a good head on his shoulders, and he was working in Douglas which is only about 20 minutes away from me.”
Julie liked the man as he was “always respectful” and never tried anything inappropriate.
After some time chatting, the man asked Julie out on a coffee date.
Julie explained: “I asked my mum to babysit the kids, and I did my hair and my makeup.
“We were meant to meet at four o’clock so I texted him about three to ask what the story was as I hadn’t heard anything.
“He said ‘I’m so sorry, something huge has happened at work. A wall fell down, there’s drama.’
“Alarm bells started ringing for me then. I was like, why didn’t he text me earlier when the wall first fell down? Why did he wait until the last minute?”
Suspicious, Julie decided to do some investigating into who she was speaking to – using an Irish obituary site.
She said: “My dad had passed away and this guy had told me his own dad had also passed away and he told me his name, so I decided to do some research.
“I went on to RIP.ie and I looked him up, and I found him, a man who owned this big business in Limerick. It said he was mourned by his sons, and their names.
“So I went on to social media and looked up all the boys. But the guy that I was chatting to was not him at all!
“I called him out on it and he blocked me straight away!”
And when Julie posted a picture of the man to warn other women she was met by an even bigger surprise.
She said: “Five other girls came forward and sent me screenshots and it was the same guy.
“Another girl had found the real guy’s page and she sent me the link. He’s over in Newcastle.
“The catfish guy had screenshotted one of his Facebook pictures, and his work crest was on his t-shirt. So she Googled the workplace and found the guy.
“I went on to his Instagram page, he seems like a lovely, normal guy. He got engaged on New Year’s Eve in New York!”
She added: “He just wanted to chat, which was bizarre. I don’t know if it was a girl behind the page, or just a lonely man.”
Source: The Sun
