Multiple Faces Detected
April 3rd, 2023
When considering dating someone online, our minds often gravitate towards the widely-used dating apps and social media platforms that enable us to connect with potential partners and cultivate a romantic relationship. However, some individuals may associate online dating with the risk of encountering fraudulent profiles and catfishing, which can dissuade them from pursuing online dating altogether.
We also think that celebrities would never step foot onto the online dating platform, since most celebrities only ever date other celebrities since they can relate more with someone who lives the same lifestyle as them. However, there was one celebrity who fell for one of these catfishing schemes.
R. Prophet is an American rapper who used to be a part of the group Nappy Roots. He had just started using social media at the time of this catfishing incident, and as a result, barely had any experience being on social media platforms. This made him an easy target for scammers and catfishes to try to talk to him since he was single, ready to mingle, and not educated about the dangers of social media.
R. Prophet Meets Trinity
R. Prophet’s team encouraged the rapper to engage with his audience on his social media profiles and to become as active as possible. He was following his fans left and right and came across a blue-eyed beauty named Trinity. He saw that she had 1,600 friends on Facebook and decided to add her.
They hit it off on Facebook Messenger immediately, and R. Prophet thought that they had made that instant connection. He said that she even helped him with some personal issues he was dealing with.
However, his team and he couldn’t ignore the major red flag that was presented to him during his relationship with Trinity: They didn’t video chat or meet in person once.
How They Found Out Trinity Was a Catfish
MTV’s show Catfish uncovered that the pictures used for Trinity’s profile actually belonged to Chris Brown’s ex-girlfriend Jasmine Sanders who happened to be a model. She reached out to R. Prophet saying how sorry she was for him, but that it wasn’t her that sent those messages.
After digging deeper, they found out that Trinity’s profile actually belonged to a woman named Crystal. R. Prophet agreed to meet with Crystal at a park and she explained how she was the mastermind behind the profile.
R. Prophet claims that he was embarrassed and felt deceived after learning that he wasn’t talking to the woman he thought he was. However, Crystal claims that she was herself the entire time while talking to R. Prophet and just the pictures were fake to lure him in.
She apologized to R. Prophet for luring him into her scheme, and he told her that even though it wasn’t cool that she did it that he couldn’t deny the unbreakable bond they had. They still keep in touch to this day and remain really good friends.
R. Prophet Had Insanely Good Luck
Even though Crystal was not a threat to him and they remain friends to this day, there are many catfish that only have bad intentions toward their victims. Whether it’s money, inappropriate images, or trying to harm you in any way many of these catfish can be bad news.
Here are some signs that you are talking to a catfish online:
- They won’t video chat with you or meet you in person. If they don’t want to video chat with you or meet you in person and come up with every excuse in the book, chances are that they aren’t the person in their pictures that you think you are talking to.
- They ask you for personal or financial information. If they ask for this information, chances are they want to commit financial or identity fraud under your name and steal your hard-earned savings. Since there should be no reason why you should give anyone online your information, refrain from doing so will help you keep your money to yourself.
- Their photos seem overly edited or too good to be true. If their photos look like models or they have a bunch of filters on them, be wary of who this person claims to be. Also, if they have too little photos of themselves this could also mean that they are a catfish.
- They move quickly into the relationship. Catfishes tend to progress your relationship with them quickly to gain your trust faster. With your trust earned, they can then try to steal your money sooner. If they want to get in a relationship with you quickly and ask for money, do not give it to them.
- They have a career that makes them work out of the country. If they are in the military or have a career that makes them work outside of the country, this could be another red flag since it gives them an excuse not to meet you in person.
If you feel like you’ve been catfished, you can reverse search their information with Social Catfish to see if everything they told you matches up to who they really are. You can reverse search names, images, email addresses, usernames from social media profiles, and phone numbers of the person you are talking to in order to verify their identity.
