But things are not as they might seem. A catfish is an informal label for someone who creates fake online personas to trick another person. They might be a man posing as a woman or vice versa. Sometimes the motive is greed and financial manipulation; other times, it’s the thrill they seek by playing with people’s emotions. Some of these catfishing stories led to simple heartbreak. Sadly, there are others that led to murder. Here are the 25 Craziest Catfish Stories of Lies and Betrayals. The thing is, she never met him. Every time he was supposed to meet her, apparently, he kept getting arrested. Dr. Phil revealed that her boyfriend isn’t real. Better luck next time. Because he was unable to get revenge on the person who conned him, he decided to kill the person who was in the picture. Luckily, the police were able to stop him. Eventually, the boy discovered that the girl not only lied about her entire life, but she was a completely different person than the one in the picture she had sent. In this particular case, the catfish also tried to guilt-trip the man after she deceived him. One kid pretended to be a 15-year-old girl and was hit on by a 54-year-old man. When the boy told the man that he was 13, the man didn’t mind and still wanted to meet up. She creates fake online profiles, makes dates with guys who are past due on their payments, and repossesses their vehicle. All in a day’s work, right? In the end, he met the girl whose picture they had used, and she wanted to go on a date with him. It turns out this girl not only didn’t have cancer, but she used a picture of another girl who actually did have it! Jenelle created an online character named Chris, a CIA agent who was apparently protecting her from cyberbullies. Sadly, Jenelle’s parents got involved, and her father, possibly believing Jenelle’s safety was at stake, murdered Billy and Billie. Now Jenelle and her parents are serving life sentences in prison. She and her daughter created a fake profile of a boy named “Josh Evans.” They then began an online relationship with Meghan. After the boy started sending negative online messages, Meghan took her own life. Lori Drew was charged but eventually acquitted for her role in this sad story. For a while, things were going great yet Clarissa kept canceling plans to meet up at the last minute. Sadly, the last time she canceled, Brandon took some pills with vodka and overdosed. He never learned that she was, in fact, Jessica Boudreau, an 18-year-old girl who used a fake identity. She even “killed off” her fake identities, leading to at least one of these teen “boyfriends” to commit suicide. After Te’o told several media outlets that his girlfriend had died, investigators discovered that the girl had never existed. The persona was created by a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who confessed to this hoax. She figured it out when he began showing up at places she only told her online boyfriend about. Then the girl told the man she had been kidnapped and needed ransom money. When he went to the police for help, it was discovered that “she” was a “he” and a scammer from Nigeria. Jones was actually an overweight woman who loved to prey on the emotions of vulnerable women. When the unsuspecting rival would show up to meet, Meleara would pretend to be a friend of the girl, then drive them to a spot where other MS-13 members would be waiting to kill them. The bizarre twist to this sad story is that the woman was a fictional persona. She was a divorced woman who used her daughter’s photos to create this online profile. When the two began talking more, Williams’ niece asked Topdog to murder her aunt. The niece was arrested for solicitation of murder. The girl thankfully survived, and the man was sentenced to prison. He actually had Googled “how to kill someone and get away with it.” When the trust was earned, he met with her and murdered her. There was no motive other than pure evil. Guzman created the page and profile to lure men in order to rob and kill them. The judge said Guzman was a thrill killer. The girl they murdered was the best friend of one of the teens. It wasn’t an underage girl but a 37-year-old man named Daniel Timothy Duplaisir, who was charged with extortion and sentenced to a year in prison. In 2010, filmmaker Nev Schulman began a corresponding relationship with a woman named Angela, her young daughter Abby (who she passed off as an art prodigy), and Angela’s beautiful half-sister Megan. Schulman began to pursue an online relationship with Megan. After many months of deceit, Nev discovered that Angela invented Megan, and it was she who had been talking to Nev the whole time.
