{"id":27067,"date":"2018-11-25T17:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T17:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=27067"},"modified":"2018-11-25T17:00:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T17:00:45","slug":"is-catfishing-a-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/is-catfishing-a-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Is \u2018catfishing\u2019 a crime?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>\u201cI feel violated, mentally and physically, by what he did\u201d said Anna Rowe, one victim of catfishing.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna Rowe, 44, believed she had met the man of her dreams when she began speaking to a man named \u2018Antony Ray\u2019 online. But little did she know that 14 months after their first encounter it would be revealed everything he told her was a lie. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Antony Ray was not his name and in fact he was married with kids. He had used photos of a Bollywood actor and even had a seperate phone dedicated to keeping up the persona of his fake life. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rowe looked upset when speaking to Channel 4 about what had happened to her. Now she wants catfishing to be illegal. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#8220;I feel violated, mentally and physically, by what he did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Anna was dating a man she met online for a year before she found out he was actually married and had children &#8211; now she wants catfishing to be made a crime. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/uiGi3RBcDj\">pic.twitter.com\/uiGi3RBcDj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Channel4News\/status\/1064921481535283201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oxford Dictionary defines \u2018catfishing\u2019 as the act of \u201cluring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Catfishing has become an increasingly common phenomenon over the past 10 years, with a show named \u201cCatfish: The TV Show\u201d even being created to call people out on their fake profiles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Voice of London spoke to a policeman, who wishes to remain anonymous, from Brent Metropolitan Police: &#8220;Catfishing in terms of online relationships is a problem, but people make the choice to get involved in online relationships. It becomes a police issue\u00a0when people are being scammed out of money.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna Rowe has started a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/creating-fake-online-profiles-for-sex-is-fraud-make-catfishing-a-crime\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">petition<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which has almost 50,000 signatures, to make catfishing illegal. She believes it should be a crime under the Fraud Act 2006, which states \u201ca person is in breach of this if he dishonestly makes a false representation, and is untrue or misleading\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stockport MP Ann Coffey urged the House of Commons in July 2017 to bring in a law to criminalise catfishing, although nothing was done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Words: Daisy Newman | Subbing: Elise Fritts<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI feel violated, mentally and physically, by what he did\u201d said Anna Rowe, one victim of catfishing. Anna Rowe, 44, believed she had met the man of her dreams when she began speaking to a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":27104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,82,110],"tags":[1208,3681,4647,5551],"class_list":["post-27067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-lifestyle","category-sex-and-relationships","tag-catfishing","tag-lifestyle","tag-online","tag-sex-and-relationships"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}