SHAH ALAM - Catfishing has become a prevalent trend in the modern age, with even well-educated and young individuals falling victim to deception on social media platforms.
Online dating apps have led to a notable surge in the prevalence of love scams and catfishing, some of which even encompass financial deception, as the years have progressed.
A revelation that left an impact was disclosed by a social media influencer, who came to the realisation that her friend had been a victim of catfishing for an extensive period spanning three years.
Known as Malia Baby on TikTok, she shared the saddening scam story of her friend, who only wanted to be known as Rara, and what she went through a few years ago.
Rara, from Kuala Lumpur, fell in love with a man named 'Imran' on the internet, and the pair quickly struck up an online relationship.
Malia, who went through the love process with her friend Rara from day one, felt that something was going wrong in the relationship.
"I felt something fishy and weird because my friend Rara had a three-year relationship with this guy called Imran without meeting even once, even though both of them live in the same city, Kuala Lumpur," she said in a TikTok video." Malia said that there were several red flags throughout their relationship, including the fact that Imran would never video call and they never met each other.
"Imran comes up with various excuses every day to avoid meeting Mimi. For example, he claims to be in a meeting or at the office.
"Day by day, it makes me angry because my friend Rara loves the guy she has never truly met, and she becomes emotionally and mentally down whenever her request to meet gets rejected," she said.
Going into more detail, Malia shared another individual named Mimi, who introduced Rara to Imran. Mimi was heavily invested in Rara and Imran's relationship.
"My friend Rara has another friend, Mimi. Whenever the three of us (Rara, Mimi, and Malia) would meet, Imran would go missing. There wouldn't be any calls or messages from him.
"I once told Rara that Mimi is Imran and that she's being cheated. But Rara was in denial because she loved Imran so much and she used to give her savings money to him," she said.
However, Malia confronted Mimi and forced her to admit that she disguised herself as Imran, although she denied it.
"Rara used to give money to Imran, but he is a sweet boy; he buys bags for her from Zalora and sends them to her house through a delivery guy.
"After years of tolerating and being cheated, Rara broke up with Imran. Imran, however, furiously asked Rara to give back all the money he had spent and told her to transfer it to Mimi's bank account number.
"That's when we began to strongly suspect that Mimi was disguising herself as Imran, even though she was friends with Rara," she said.
Therefore, Malia hopes that her friend's story will be a lesson to all girls out there.
"To all the ladies out there who are using online dating applications, do not fall into the love trap.
"Arrange a meeting before falling in love, and make sure that the person is real," she said.