Teen awarded £10,000 after four-year catfishing campaign stole her identity
Multiple fake social media accounts were made of Sasha Davies, who 'stopped feeling safe leaving the house' after being approached by people thinking they were in romantic relationships with her
A 19-year-old girl whose identity was stolen by another teenager as part of a four-year catfishing campaign has been awarded £10,000 in damages.
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Sasha Davies was 16 when Elha-Mai Weston targeted her. Davies did not know Weston, but they lived in the same Welsh town.
Weston used photos of Davies lifted from her social media accounts, as well as AI-generated material, to create a series of fake online profiles, a judge heard.
She went on to target men over several social media sites, including Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and Tinder, gaining 100,000 followers who believed that the profile was owned by Davies.
Weston led some of the followers to believe they were in romantic relationships with Davies, and some even tried to approach her in person.
Davies reported the incident to police, but the catfishing continued for almost four years across seven different platforms until she approached lawyers, asking for help in tracking down the person responsible.
“Catfishing” refers to when a person creates a fake online persona to trick and sometimes control others.
Davies’ lawyers ultimately brought legal proceedings against Weston in London’s High Court, where a judge has now awarded her £10,000 in compensation.
Weston confessed that she was to blame, and lawyers in court said that she apologised.
Following the hearing, Davies said that for “four years someone else was living a life as me, talking to men as me, while strangers approached me in the street believing they knew me”.
After reporting the incident to the police, she said officers made her feel like “nothing could be done.
“I stopped feeling safe leaving the house,” she said.
Hearing Weston confess and apologise in court means that Davies said she can “finally start getting my life back.”
“I want other girls going through this to know it is not hopeless; the person doing it can be found,” she said.
Davies’ defence, Chris Zabilowicz, told the court that her nightmare began aged 16 and has continued right up until earlier this year.
He told Mr Justice Fordham that Weston had “engaged in a sustained campaign of online impersonation” by creating and running “numerous accounts under the fictitious identity Sophie and … Sophie Kadare”.
As a consequence of those phoney accounts, Davies was “approached on a number of occasions by members of the public who had interacted with the Sophie persona and believed they had a genuine connection with her”.
In one incident, Davies was shown messages a man had sent to one of the accounts over several months, during which he believed he was in a romantic relationship with her.
Despite having contacted police, the court heard that it was only after Davies appeared on television that the majority of the pages were deleted.
Under the instruction of Davies, legal firm Cohen Davis Solicitors launched an open-source investigation that eventually identified Weston.
Weston went on to settle the claim against her, part of which involved apologising in court.
She said she accepted “that her conduct was wrongful” and that it caused “very significant distress and suffering” to Davies.
Yair Cohen, another of Davies’s legal team, said: “Catfishing is one of the most misunderstood forms of online abuse. People imagine a distant stranger, but in case after case we have handled, including this one, the person behind the accounts was somebody within the victim’s own world.”