This Girl’s Unbelievable Catfish Story Will Make You Rethink Online Dating

Emma hadn’t realized that she’d fallen into a catfish trap by a lonely man by the name of Alan Stanley. He was 53, divorced, and mourning his failed marriage of 22 years. He’s only solace was to meet women online under another identity. He used “Ronnie” as a way to meet these women online but to keep them at a distance, so he wouldn’t end up getting hurt. alan bypassed posting pictures of himself and found Adem’s modeling photos on Google. Emma’s was the first profile he say on Zoosk. Although Emma’s was the first he’d seen, he admits to having done this at least fives times prior to the debacle with Emma. He’d become online pals with women all over the world and conveniently avoided video calls or meetings.

Somehow he spun his story into a relationship with Emma, with both agreeing to delete the dating app and only speak to each other. He also made up countless excuses for an in-person date although they only lived 100 miles apart. She constantly talked about Ronnie at the restaurant she worked at, where she was the manager. After a long night, one of her employees asked if she even thought that Ronnie was even real. Stunned, she hadn’t thought to question Ronnie being a real person.

Shortly after, she downloaded an app called Reverse Image Search. She put in her photos of Ronnie and they traced her to Adem Guezel. She found his Facebook, modeling website, and more. The next day she asked Ronnie about it and he told her that it was another name he went by during his early days of modeling. Emma, wanting to believe him, let it go until one day when she got an e-mail sounding like Ronnie but the e-mail address read “Alan S.” instead. Ronnie told her that he’d just bought a used computer from someone else and hadn’t been able to change the settings on it just yet. Everything became more suspicious and Emma decided to take her investigation even more seriously. She found that  a photo Ronnie sent from an aquarium was posted on TripAdvisor by an Alan S. again. She confronted him again in tears and he fessed up to his lies.

Written by Irvi Torremoro

Irvi Torremoro is an Austinite by way of Las Vegas. She's worked in various outlets in food & beverage and is now focused on writing, eating all the things, talking about Beyonce, and petting all the puppies. She runs flavorandbounty.com, a lifestyle blog about people in the service industry.