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SALT LAKE CITY — Catfish, we know, is a type of fish with a large head and whiskers. But, in the sea of social media – a catfish is defined as someone who pretends to be someone they're not online.
Take Facebook. On the mega social media site a catfish will send you a friend request and hope you accept. From there they work to steal your heart, your money – even your identity.
KSL Investigators have been contacted by concerned social media users who are fed up with online catfish schemes. One woman, who asked us to only use her first name, got so tired of these fake profiles scams on Facebook, she began turning the tables on the scammers. The single grandmother told the KSL Investigators she has caught five catfish in a matter of weeks.
"The first guy, his name was Arnold," recounted Lail. "The next guy is Joseph. Then there's Michael. Then, there's the other Michael and Jason. These people are not who they say they are."
Lail's radar for catfishing first went up thanks to that guy named Arnold. They had messaged each other for several weeks when Arnold secretly took things a step further and sent her roses. Lail had suspected Arnold wasn't really who he'd claimed to be, and thankfully for her, not even the scent of two dozen long stem roses could mask the stench of the catfish who tried to lure her.
"They were gorgeous," Laid said. A few days later, he messaged her about the roses.
"I said, 'you sent them?'" Lail recalled. "He said, 'yes, baby, I sent them.' He called me, 'baby.' "
Lail has learned scammers will say anything to try to trick unsuspecting victims into letting down their guard. They've professed to her that "God is good" and it must be "divine intervention" that led them to her.
"They all start out the same," Lail told the KSL Investigators. " 'Good morning, thanks for the likes and comments.' Then, they start telling me about themselves."
And the catfish are quick to pop "the question." Lail says she has had two proposals of marriage. Both were made online and not in person.
"Most of them, of course, will not want to meet you or anything," Lail said.
Then, like Arnold, they pop the "other" question – "will you send money?"
Catfish will give one of many different reasons as to why they need your cash or your credit card and personal information. They'll claim they need to buy a plane ticket, get their car repaired, or obtain a travel visa to come visit you. In Lail's case, Arnold asked her to pay back taxes. Lail refused.
"I wanted to see how far this would go," said Lail. "I said, 'you know what, I will really try to get this money for you but you've got to tell me more.' And, he would get very, very upset."
Lail's experiment taught her when not to accept a new friend on Facebook: Newly-created pages with few posts and no mutual friends. In her experience, even catfish who claim to live in a nearby town are likely located overseas.
Just to make sure a fake is a fake, she uses a free online search tool called Tineye, where she can save and then upload a person's profile photo. When she uploaded Arnold's photo, the results were astounding.
"It came up with five results," said Lail. "He has 14 pages of complaints."
Tineye connects the same photo to 200 scam warnings. And it turns out, Arnold isn't his only name.
"He was also known as Arrigo, Alexander, Jared, Van Anderson, Thomas…"
Catfish are not just baiting single women. Several recent stories highlight the Internet hoax's dangers as catfish use social media as a weapon.
This past summer, a Texas judge handed down a 30-year-prison sentence to a man who used a fake Facebook profile to lure and kill another man. Last spring, police in Hartford, Connecticut, accused a 16-year-old boy of posing as a 13-year-old girl to lure at least 20 other teens into sharing nude photos so he could blackmail them. And a Tennessee jury last year convicted a woman of posing online as a CIA agent to trick her own father into killing a couple she was feuding with online.
The KSL Investigators reached out to Facebook about catfish using its site to fool people. In a statement, the social media giant told us when it catches fraudulent activity, it works to counter it by "blocking accounts and removing the fake accounts and activity all at once."
Facebook also wants people to report fake profiles and asks users not to accept friend requests from people they don't know. Doing so could allow you and your real friends to be targeted by scammers and catfish. And, Facebook warns not only of fake profiles, but also fake pages with promotional offers. It urges users to check to see if the page is verified.
The FBI Salt Lake City Cyber Crimes Task Force says it sees many different variations of catfishing and warns people to be especially cautious if they're meeting or chatting with people online. Are they out of the country? Do they have a loved one in the hospital? Are they having trouble transferring funds for a work project? Any one of these scenarios are red flags that they'll be asking you for money.
Another red flag: Friend requests from someone you're already a friend with – the latest request is probably an impostor. Don't accept the request.
And the FBI says if a current friend begins to uncharacteristically post work-at-home opportunities or celebrity videos – those may be signs the account has been taken over by a scammer.
All social media users should limit how much personal information they share online. In the hands of a capable catfish, that can lead to a broken heart, stolen money or even a lost life.
As for Lail, she says she's officially retired from tracking down fakes on Facebook. For the couple of months she did it, she found it to be exhausting work.
Contributing: Sloan Schrage
