In recent years, more and more people have discovered that scammers are using their social media photos to create fake profiles. This form of identity theft leads to victims being falsely accused of fraud by those who come across their images. In some cases, the victims even receive threats from people they have never met—yet who are convinced that they were scammed by them posing as an online partner.
In 2014, a resident of Palm Springs, California, James Scott Geras, began receiving numerous messages on Facebook from unfamiliar women who were convinced they knew him personally. At first, he didn’t pay much attention to it: such cases were rare, and he easily explained to people that there had been a mistake. However, over time, the number of messages increased. The women sincerely believed they were in a romantic relationship with him—despite the fact that he was openly gay and had never met any of them before.
Geras soon managed to figure out what was happening. All the women who contacted him said they had met him in chat rooms, on dating sites, or in mobile apps for finding a partner. In reality, scammers were using his photos to create fake profiles and extort money from unsuspecting victims.
When the virtual partner started acting suspiciously—asking for large sums of money or contradicting himself—the women or their relatives began searching for more information about him and found Geras’ real social media accounts through his photos. One of the victims shared that she had been in an online relationship for five months and gave the scammer all her savings before her daughter uncovered the deception.
Some of the women who messaged Geras believed they had found a "second account" of their loved one. Others accused him of identity theft—thinking that he was the one who had stolen the photos from the "real" man they had allegedly been communicating with. Many insulted Geras despite his innocence. They wished him to burn in hell, and one woman wrote that she hoped he would die of AIDS. Another woman admitted that if he hadn’t proven his innocence, she would have come to his home with her relatives to "settle the matter".
Geras turned out to be one of many victims of a specific type of identity theft: scammers used photos of ordinary men taken from open sources to deceive women. Although the latter were the primary victims, those whose photos were stolen also suffered serious consequences.
This scheme became known as catfishing. One of the first men to encounter it was 59-year-old Victor, who agreed to speak with journalists but preferred not to disclose his last name. Like Geras, he regularly received messages from unfamiliar women who were either desperately trying to find their online partner or threatening him. One of them wrote:
If you are the same person who added me as a friend on Facebook, then you are an excellent liar. You have destroyed my trust in men. Now I have to pay off the loans I took out to help you.
Another woman stated that since she had found him, he should "do the right thing," or she would show up in his life personally. Victor had become so accustomed to such messages that he prepared a standard response:
— Good day. If this response seems generic to you, that’s because it is. On average, I receive such messages two to three times a month. I am aware that my photos have been stolen and are being used by scammers on Facebook, other social networks, and apps. This has been going on for about 10 years.
According to Victor, his photos originally fell into the hands of fraudsters through his MySpace profile, which was popular in the late 2000s. He had repeatedly come across accounts of women posting his photos with captions like, "Meet my fiancé!" Comments under such posts were filled with congratulations. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that Victor was already married, but fortunately, his wife took the situation with understanding.
In 2014, Ruth Grover created the Facebook group ScamHaters United, where members work to expose scammers. Over eight years, she gathered a massive database of fake profiles and identified patterns in how fraudsters operate. Victor’s face was one of the first in her archive. According to Grover, he had “that very” image most commonly used by criminals.
Grover claims that scammers prefer photos of men with an “open face,” a kind smile, and a sincere look. Most often, they choose pictures of white men with an average physique. According to FBI data, victims of romance scams are most frequently widows and divorced women of middle and older age. To attract this audience, fraudsters use photos of well-groomed, silver-haired men, such as Geras and Victor. Grover gives an example:
— There was an Australian doctor named Richard Terry. Only six of his photos were publicly available, but now you can find more than a hundred edited images online, where his head has been attached to someone else’s body. Poor Richard is still popular among scammers.
Besides photos, scammers create plausible biographies designed to gain trust. In Victor’s fake profiles, he was depicted as an American building a shelter in Africa, an oil rig engineer thousands of miles from home, or a widowed Christian. A common trait among all these fake identities was their ability to charm women, their promises of happiness, and their persistent requests for money. One such message read:
— You are so beautiful that any man would want to hold your hand. If I showed your picture in heaven, the angels would hide their faces in shame over their appearance.
The FBI notes that victims of such scams, despite being confident computer users, often find themselves vulnerable due to emotional distress.
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