Multiple Faces Detected
January 21st, 2026
Kateryna Volovyk is a well-known social media influencer on Instagram who is known for posting photos of her traveling the world in a floating city. When she isn’t visiting her favorite beaches, she spends her time working hard on the celebrity cruise line, Equinox. She has been working in the cruise line industry for over five years and has just been promoted to a bridge officer. However, with a popular social media profile comes a train of scammers that want to steal pictures for themselves. She has dealt with a number of romance scammers who steal her pictures on a daily then create fake profiles to steal other people’s money.
When Did She Start to Notice the Fake Profiles?
At first, she only had 300 followers on her Instagram page which included her close friends and family. Then when she started posting photos of herself working on a cruise line while traveling the world, she gained 3,000-4,000 followers.
This is when she started to notice fake profiles being created around her photos but didn’t pay much attention to it. She thought that it was just people who were having fun and being silly by creating fake profiles. That all changed when she received a text message that would confuse her and her husband.
How Did She Notice That the Fake Profiles Belonged to Romance Scammers?
There was one day where a guy texted her husband, claiming that he was being robbed for being with Katarina. He ignored the guy and didn’t pay attention to the message, thinking that he was crazy at first. Then later in the day, the same guy texted Katarina claiming that she had robbed him and threatened legal action.
That’s when she saw the screenshots he sent her of messages from a WhatsApp profile that was using her images. The screenshots read “I love you” and “I miss you.” Then, there was a text message that asked him for money so that the scammer could supposedly fly to India and be with him.
“Some people are going to college or a university then getting a job and working hard, making a career for themselves. Then, there is somebody else who is just stealing some photos and names to scam people. They are getting a bigger amount of money than the people who work hard instead,” Katarina stated.
Other victims of romance scams have messaged Katarina claiming that she is a cheater, a liar, and demand their money back. They don’t realize that Katarina was not the one behind these romance scams and that she is a also a victim herself. These victims think that she created different profiles to rob them out of money while being married on the side.
Because of this, once they find her profile they become very angry and demand their money back. This is usually because they have no one else to blame and nowhere else to go to get the money they had lost back. She thinks that people target her profile because she is not a well-known celebrity so its very easy for scammers to get away with it.
What Stories Did These Romance Scammers Come Up With?
These romance scammers claim that they are stuck on a ship due to the coronavirus with no way of getting home. They usually ask victims for ticket money to go home so that they can see them and be with them. However, once the victims send these romance scammers money, they block the victims and take the money. This is when the victims usually find Katarina’s real profile and accuse her of robbing them.
One of Katarina’s favorite stories was that she was stuck on a ship that was attacked by Somolian pirates.
What Did Social Catfish’s Reverse Image Search Platform Find?
We found that hundreds of fake profiles were created using Katarina’s photos. Usually when we find many images of someone, we can trace each one back to multiple social media and dating profiles. This only ever happens when photos are stolen by romance scammers to create several fake profiles that will eventually scam many victims out of thousands of dollars. Because of these results, we can conclude that she is very reputable in the romance scam world.
What Does Katarina Want These Romance Scam Victims to Know?
Katarina's ONLY Official Instagram Account
She has posted screenshots of numerous fake profiles on her Instagram profile to show her followers that these are fake accounts. Her only real Instagram username is @ekate_qwerty, and she does not plan on creating additional accounts, nor has she ever created additional accounts to steal people’s money.
She only has an Instagram account and a LinkedIn account, any other account people find of hers is fake. She is also not looking for a relationship and has been happily married for five years. She would also like to remind people that she will never ask for money for any reason, especially for plane tickets.
Her biggest advice to these victims or to people who are looking for love online is to video call with the person before getting into a serious relationship with them. It is very easy to spot a fake video call, since the stolen video is very hard to match the scammer’s voice. The video would also loop and look the same every single time. With a real video call, you can tell when the person moves around and when their voice matches their lips that it’s a real person.
She feels very sad for the people who work hard for their money just to have it stolen from her by romance scammers.
Social Catfish is Here to Help You!
If you think you’re dealing with a scammer or have had your pictures stolen, Social Catfish is here to help you!
If you want to be a part of our next YouTube video or blog post and share your story, now is your chance. You can educate our audience about what you have gone through and make sure no one else goes through the same thing. All you need to do is email ShareMyStory@socialcatfish.com, and we will get back to you with more details.
You can also reverse search any information you have on the Nigerian romance scammer to see who it is you’ve really been talking to. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image you can search it up in our search bar to see if there is more information on the suspected scammer you are talking to.
