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Martha Hidalgo She is 24 years old, she is a dentist, she lives in Venezuela and has never traveled to Colombia, but for two years now her photos have been on the Instagram account of a Colombian woman who calls herself Sara Manuela on their social networks.
Everything was anonymous until Martha, on Tuesday night, told on her Instagram profile impersonator that she was the real woman and that she was being impersonated. In an exclusive interview with El Colombiano, she told her version of events.
How long was he impersonating you?
“She's been impersonating me for two years. This account has been active since August 2021, but it had photos from before that date. That makes me think she may have had it for longer, but she does have photos from two years ago.”
In the video you said you weren't going to file a complaint against her, why?
“I didn't want to report her at first because she told me she was in psychiatric treatment, and at the time, I wanted to be empathetic so she wouldn't hurt herself. At the time, I said nice things to her, spoke well to her, offered my support if she ever needed it, but then things got worse, and I realized that her mental health didn't necessarily affect me because she did it consciously for about two years.
However, now that I have received information and help from psychologists, lawyers, and other people who know about the subject, I have decided to file a formal complaint about this because her mental state does not prevent her from committing an illegal act.”
The lawsuit is already pending, before which authorities will you file it?
"I haven't done it yet, but I plan to do it tomorrow. I'm consulting carefully about whether to do it in Venezuela or how to get it to Colombia. In fact, Colombian lawyers have contacted me to advise me."
How did you realize she was impersonating you and make initial contact with the woman who managed Sara Manuela's account?
“The truth is I didn't realize it, but one day a person wrote to me, told me her name, and told me that she did it because a person in Colombia was using my photos, impersonating me and was using it on an Instagram profile, and a boyfriend of hers discovered her, confronted her and told her that the real person in the photo was Martha Hidalgo from Venezuela, And that was when I started trying to contact her.”
How was your first video call with her?
“The first meeting was via video call because when I realized Sara Manuela had pretended to be one of my mom's clients and we had her contact information, I tried calling her from my number and my mom's, but she had us blocked. Then she sent us a message saying she had two missed calls from that number. I sent her a video, told her I knew who it was, and said I needed to talk. She told me she was at university and that we could talk later. Within 20 minutes, she texted me on my personal number and started the video call. At one point, she showed her face, and then she didn't. Then she told me she had a mental health problem, that she had worked on her physical appearance, and showed me before-and-after photos of herself.”
Are you undergoing treatment with a psychologist?
“She told me she was undergoing psychiatric treatment, that her parents knew, that they were treating her mental illness, although they didn't know she had a fake profile.”
How long has it been since you first met her and the moment the case went viral?
“The first time I contacted her was in October 2022. At the time, I stood by her, showed my support, didn't report her, spoke to my family, and she told me she was closing the account. At that point, everything was fine for us. She had blocked me, my friends, and my closest family members, and I hadn't realized she had reopened the account.”
How did they realize that?
“I realized the profile was still active because a friend of a friend in Colombia told her it was still active. When I searched for it on my account, it didn't appear. Neither did my closest friends because I had blocked them. We kept trying until the user did appear on the Instagram of a friend I hadn't blocked. The profile was private, and she only had one image, which was a meme, but there was still content about me on the reels, and she had posted a story 21 hours earlier, which indicated that the account was indeed still active.”
So that's when you contacted her for the second time?
“Yes, at that point I unblocked her from my WhatsApp and contacted her again. I was upset. I asked her why the account was still active, and she told me she didn't know the reels were still there, that she thought she'd deleted everything, and that she'd reopened the account because she wanted to sell it. At the time, she had over 2,000 followers, and she told me that in Colombia they sold accounts for startups. I didn't believe her.”
So what happened?
“We continued talking, and she told me she was going to give me the account passwords so I could close them myself. It took her over half an hour to share them with me. I guess at that point she was finishing deleting the posts and recent conversations we'd had. She gave me the password, and I logged into the account, unsure whether to close it or not. I left it open for a day.”
And didn't the idea of making a publication get you interested?
“Yes, I actually posted a story, and it got a lot of reactions. A lot of people started writing, asking why she'd been gone for so long, why she'd stopped responding. People felt her absence, and a lot of people had written to her. Then I realized there were a lot of people involved with that profile, so I thought I should not only shut it down, but I should get the story out there.”
Did this person only have an Instagram profile in your name?
“No, at that moment I realized she'd also created an Instagram profile for my mom, for a cousin she passed off as my sister. She also had a WhatsApp account for me, my sister, and my mom. So that's when I decided to make the stories that went viral because if I just closed her account, she could still keep in touch with other people online. I made the stories so those people would know that Sara Manuela never existed.”
Did Sara Manuela scam anyone?
“As far as I know, and this is why I also asked people on Instagram to tell me their stories with her, she hasn't scammed anyone. What I do know is that she's broken several people's hearts. She's left plane tickets already purchased. She caused someone to end a real relationship, with a guy who fell in love with her and ended up with his girlfriend. Someone also bought her some accessories, but she never received the gifts because she didn't give her home address.”
What did those Sara Manuela lovers tell you?
“There was one who told me that he found the situation very funny because he felt that he loved me, but he was aware that he had never spoken to me and at that moment I was in shock because I didn't know how to respond to this situation, but I explained the matter to him, he told me that he had bought some tickets for the person, but that he didn't arrive at the airport, but I don't know with what information he bought it or if it actually happened or not.”
What lesson does this experience teach you?
“My message is that nothing you see on social media is real. We can be sad, depressed, upset about our physical appearance and still upload smiling photos, but that's not real. Instagram is a facade where we always try to show the positive side, but we have to keep in mind that everyone has their problems. Just like Sara Manuela thought my life was perfect, maybe it wasn't real. I've had moments when I didn't feel comfortable with my body.”
This was the version of events that Martha Hidalgo She told El Colombiano about what happened with the case of Sara Manuela, the person who impersonated her on social media.
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Journalism student at the University of Antioquia. Interested in narrative journalism and sports.
English 
Spanish