TEENAGER AWARDED £10,000 AFTER IDENTITY STOLEN FOR CATFISHING

Sasha-Jay Davies, 19, from Aberdare will receive £10,000 in compensation after her images were used to create fake social media and dating app profiles. Elha Mai Weston posed as Davies across Tinder, TikTok, Instagram, Hinge, Snapchat, Facebook and SoundCloud, accumulating more than 100,000 followers. The High Court in London heard Weston conducted the impersonation campaign between 2022 and 2026, using aliases including "Sophie" and "Sophie Kadare" to strike up romantic conversations with men. Weston also created artificial intelligence images based on Davies' likeness to sustain the deception. Weston has apologised and admitted liability.

Davies said the campaign left her fearful of leaving home, as men who believed they were in relationships with her approached her in person. About 20 men and several women contacted Davies on social media after encountering the fake accounts. One man approached her in the supermarket believing he was in a genuine relationship with her, having exchanged months of messages with one of Weston's accounts. Davies said she first reported a fake TikTok account in 2022 when she was 16, but the impersonation spread to multiple platforms. Even after making her own accounts private, Weston continued posting older photographs and altered images, the court heard.

Davies told BBC Wales that being confronted by strangers over interactions she did not participate in was terrifying. She said she had been harassed and accused of leading men on and making plans to meet them, despite having no knowledge of those conversations. The court accepted Weston's admission of a sustained campaign of online impersonation.