Mum-of-two Julie Haynes finally felt ready to get back on the dating scene again after breaking up with the father of her children, but couldn't have imagined some of the challenges that awaited her.
The parenting blogger, who shares her experiences raising twins through the Instagram account twins_and_me, was keen to try out online dating.
Friends of hers had previously forged happy relationships through the likes of Tinder and Bumble and Julie felt it was worth a shot, reports RSVP Live.
At first, things seemed to be going swimmingly for Julie. She matched with a very "respectful" man who claimed to be a builder from Clare with his own company and "four or five lads working under him". They were soon chatting away and it seemed that romance was on the cards at last.
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Julie said: "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 was impressed by how her match was “always respectful” towards her, never pestering for nudes or acting inappropriately. After getting to know each other online, he asked her out for a coffee, to which she excitedly agreed.
She recalled: "I asked my mom 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 3 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".
At this point, "alarm bells started ringing" and Julie wondered why he hadn't messaged her when the wall first collapsed, puzzled why he would cancel right at the last minute.
Putting her detective hat on, Julie decided to try and find out a bit more about him. During one of their online hear-to-hearts, she'd opened up about her father's death and the match responded by telling her about losing his dad. He'd even told her his name.
Julie said: "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!”
Wanting to warn other women about his deceit, Julie uploaded a photo of the man’s profile to Instagram and was surprised when not one but five others came forward with screenshots of the exact same person. It was clear she wasn't the only one he'd tricked.
One girl had even found the real guy’s page and sent Julie the link.
According to Julie: "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!”
Considering why this seemingly "lovely" guy would do such a thing, Julie said: "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".
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