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A case of impersonation that seems to be taken from 'Catfish', that reality 'MTV' that documented certain couples who had formed an online relationship, but without seeing each other in person, often discovering someone else's deception, has gone viral on social media both in Colombia as in Venezuela.
The reason? A Colombian woman, who called herself Sara Manuela Giraldo, She acted like a girl from the neighboring country for more than two years and He tricked dozens of people into creating a support network.
This is how he announced it Martha Hidalgo, owner of the photographs, through her personal account.
A post shared by Martha Hidalgo (@marthahidalgoh)
The story, told by Martha, a dental professional and owner of a practice, began a little over a year and a half ago when a "random" person (as she calls it) wrote to her Instagram to warn her that someone was impersonating her.
"I wrote to him, I posted on my profile 'someone is impersonating me, please report this account,'" he says. However, He didn't follow up on him, because he thought he had deleted the account.But it wasn't like that.
In October 2022, another person alerted her again, this time attaching evidence: “Something that I found really alarming was when he sent me the messages he exchanged with her,” well Not only did he have a fake account for her, but he also pretended to be her family. using very personal photographs that had not been published on social networks.
Almost everything matched: except for the name, they even shared the same profession.
"He tells me that he met her on Facebook and they had been in an online relationship for four months.", but Every time they tried to see each other, he came up with some tragic excuse, which led him to suspect. So when he confronted her, she accepted the impersonation, but also told him that "she suffered from depression, was overweight, and had had a very tragic life, and that's why she used someone else's photos," Martha recalls.
A phenomenon occurred: curiously, Hidalgo points out, the fake profile looked more real due to the number of interactions, friends, and posts it had. All of the above exceeded those of the original profile.
Then came the Testimony of another young man, who even broke up with his girlfriend to start a relationship with Sara ManuelaHe was so interested that he bought her tickets to Curaçao, a Caribbean paradise island, but she never made it to the airport.
The task of tracking down the person behind the mysterious profile was difficult: they used a single phone to impersonate themselves, with different (and consistent) social media accounts and online accounts. But it wasn't impossible.
Her entire family banded together to find the imposter, even though she had blocked them, and they had an idea: to find out who owned the numbers from which she contacted the aforementioned children.
This is how they realized that one of these appeared added to both Martha's and her mother's contact lists under the pseudonym 'Laura Colombia': "My mom makes party decorations, and apparently this person wrote to her on Instagram a while ago asking for a quote. She never made the decorations, but her number stuck.", the young woman confesses.
In your case, She posed as a patient who needed an appointment at her office., but he never attended. That's why he had access to the WhatsApp statuses.
With that information I could find her, 'Laura'.
After noticing that the young woman had initially contacted her from her personal profile to compliment her appearance or make occasional comments, she decided to speak to her; she found herself with someone going through a difficult situation and, in a way, created her own refuge.
"I never spoke rudely to her. I realized she was a person who was suffering from a mental illness because she dared to tell me her story," he says. For that reason chose to be empathetic And with a message of "My apologies, Martha, I hope to survive depression. It's not an easy battle, but it's not impossible. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you," her other self said goodbye.
Martha, moved by his attitude and the way he apologized, let what happened go, vowing that it would end there. However, she took control of her Instagram account to tell her side of the story and continue to alert her followers.
He also announced that there will be a sequel, as once the case became public, more important events followed, so thousands of people are now waiting for the sequel.
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