18-Year-Old Boy Poses As Kidnapped Girl Online, Gets Slapped With Federal Charges
https://nigeriaafrica1.blogspot.com/2013/09/18-year-old-boy-poses-as-kidnapped-girl.html
A desperate chase for a girl who was allegedly kidnapped and held for ransom ended with the arrest of an 18-year-old boy who basically Catfish’d authorities into thinking there was a missing girl.
“Somebody help me,” Kate Brianna Fulton desperately tweeted last month, a tweet that was followed by a family friend reporting her missing to the U.S. Embassy in Moldova.
This set off a manhunt all across the European town, as authorities searched every place of dwelling, including hostels and hotels, all in order to find the missing girl, who was allegedly being held on a $50,000 ransom.
Authorities soon found out Kate wasn’t a real person, but merely the creation of Andriy Mykhaylivskyy, an 18-year-old boy from Rutherford, New Jersey, who created social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Skype for her, according to the New York Daily News.
When confronted about the accounts, Mykhaylivskyy confessed to creating them, saying it was all a “joke,” as he used the account to “catfish” another classmate.
The term catfish refers to pretending to be someone else online in order to dupe someone into an online relationship.
The joke was on Mykhaylivskyy, however, as he was arrested on Tuesday and charged with making false statements to a U.S. official. He’s being held on $5,000 bail and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
This should be a lesson for those devious folks out there creating fake profiles online!
This set off a manhunt all across the European town, as authorities searched every place of dwelling, including hostels and hotels, all in order to find the missing girl, who was allegedly being held on a $50,000 ransom.
Authorities soon found out Kate wasn’t a real person, but merely the creation of Andriy Mykhaylivskyy, an 18-year-old boy from Rutherford, New Jersey, who created social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Skype for her, according to the New York Daily News.
When confronted about the accounts, Mykhaylivskyy confessed to creating them, saying it was all a “joke,” as he used the account to “catfish” another classmate.
The term catfish refers to pretending to be someone else online in order to dupe someone into an online relationship.
The joke was on Mykhaylivskyy, however, as he was arrested on Tuesday and charged with making false statements to a U.S. official. He’s being held on $5,000 bail and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
This should be a lesson for those devious folks out there creating fake profiles online!
