It began as a simple message between a man and woman, then became a love story about illness, death, lies and family ties, before ending as a cautionary exemplar of the destructive force of catfishing.
Kirat Assi, a radio presenter from London, lost a decade of her life to a phoney online relationship with a “cardiologist” called “Bobby”. Her misfortune has been chronicled in a popular podcast, Sweet Bobby, in which the full, breathtaking extent of the Machiavellian dupe is laid bare. The scam has been described by a leading authority in cyberpsychology as “the War and Peace of catfishing”.
Catfishing refers to an online deception in which false identities are used to lure unsuspecting victims into virtual relationships. The perpetrators gain trust by using photographs and videos lifted from others’ profiles, stealthily forging real-life bonds to manipulate and sometimes blackmail targeted individuals, often with devastating financial and emotional consequences.
The deceit has grown with the rise of social media. In Belfast last year a 22-year-old student faced trial on 193 charges relating to about 60 alleged victims. This year the MTV series Catfish UK followed the story of a woman lured by a catfish pretending to be in the navy. The series revealed 6,000 such military romance scams in 2019, with fraudsters earning a combined £68 million. UK Finance, a trade association, reported an annual 20 per cent rise in bank transfer fraud last year.
Sweet Bobby, presented by the journalist Alexi Mostrous and produced by Tortoise Media, exposes a meticulously planned scheme in which Assi was misled for years and conned into an emotional relationship reinforced by the appearance of seemingly plausible real-life characters.
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Mostrous’s investigation reveals a sophisticated and devastating multi-layered “romance fraud” conspiracy made all the more intriguing for its lack of obvious motive.
Dr Chris Hand, a senior psychology lecturer at Glasgow University who features in the podcast, calls the story “a poster case for catfishing”. He says: “Often with catfishing scams, online fraud or relationship fraud, it’s unsophisticated and obvious to the observer. But this is different; the perpetrator has used detailed knowledge of the victim’s family, professional life, cultural background and living circumstances to build a fictional universe that, to the victim as well as the outside casual observer, is captivating.”
The lack of obvious financial or sexual motivation makes the case of Sweet Bobby highly unusual, the psychologist adds. “Many of these scams are driven by a motivation to get money or information that could be used as extortion,” Hand says. “This is more elegant than that — the motives aren’t entirely clear . . . The universe this person has built, the range of characters created and the manipulation they’ve used, is really quite intricate. It’s the War and Peace of catfishing.”
The investigation tells how Assi was contacted by “Bobby”, the brother of her cousin’s boyfriend, after a death in his family. The pair’s exchanges grew intimate, eventually developing into a cybersexual relationship as “Bobby” had a seemingly tumultuous run of near-death experiences and serious illnesses. The trauma sucked Assi into a fiction she couldn’t see for ten years.
Hand says: “The person behind it had real-world knowledge and was able to drip that into what they were creating to give it legitimacy, making it such a compelling hustle.”
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A common reaction from onlookers, or listeners, is to question how the victim could be so gullible, but Hand warns that many of us could be more vulnerable to such behaviour than we realise. “It’s easy for the casual observer to ask how anyone could be so naive, but a lot of people fall into the trap because the person is giving them what they need.”
According to Hand, expert catfishers exploit the most basic of human needs and the innate tendency to think the best of people.
A trend towards victim-blaming on social media forums forms the basis of a new research study led by Hand, due to be published in the science journal Computers in Human Behaviour. Entitled “Beautiful Victims: How the Halo of Attractiveness Impacts Judgmnts of Celebrity and Lay Victims of Online Abuse”, it compared reactions towards victims of social media phenomena such as Twitter pile-ons.
In a sample of more than 300 people the study found that celebrities and those considered to be likeable or attractive were more likely to elicit sympathetic reactions if targeted by online abuse.
Hand says: “At an individual level celebrities tend to get more sympathy than people on the street. And what we’ve shown with this research is that it seems to be because they’re seen as being more attractive. It’s not just about what they post online, but it’s also status or perceived attractiveness.”
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The study also looked at the make-up of those making such judgments, and found that some respondents who displayed victim-blaming behaviours also displayed characteristics of everyday psychopathy as measured in the Short Dark Triad personality test.
“Even if the victim has posted something really positive and got absolute pelters, people who score high in psychopathy don’t care,” Hand says. “They still blame the victim for posting anything in the first place.
“It’s not just about what people post, it’s about how people reply, who you are and who is looking at it. Unfortunately, Joe Public doesn’t tend to get as much sympathy as a celebrity, or someone who looks less attractive.”
