Whether it's out of revenge, loneliness, curiosity or boredom, an emerging class of Internet predators cite dozens of reasons for scamming their way into romantic relationships with unsuspecting victims seeking love online.
By creating fake profiles on social networking sites, these predators trick people into thinking that they are someone else entirely. The fabricated life stories and photographs that they cobble together online often contain the experiences, friends, resumes and job titles that they wish were their own, providing a complete window into how these scammers want the world to see them - and how far they fall from those ideals.
The emergence of such elaborate social schemes online was brought to light in a shocking way in the 2010 documentary 'Catfish,' in which 28-year-old Nev Schulman fell in love with a gorgeous young woman's Facebook profile and her voice over the phone - both of which turned out to belong to a middle-aged wife and mother.

Schulman later turned the documentary into a show, where he helps others solve the mysteries of their online relationships.
The potential victims always come to Schulman with a similar list of questions for their online lovers: 'Why does he refuse to chat via web cam?'; 'Why is she never able to meet in person?'; and finally, 'Why does it just seem too good to be true?'
The documentary and the show has intrigued and shocked the nation, and its title has since been unofficially canonized into the English language.
Most recently, Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick used the term 'catfish' to describe a hoax that one of his football players apparently fell for.
'I would refer all of you, if you're not already familiar with it, with both the documentary called "Catfish," the MTV show which is a derivative of that documentary, and the sort of associated things you'll find online and otherwise about catfish, or catfishing,' Swarbrick told reporters Wednesday in describing the incident involving his star linebacker, Manti Te'o.


The woman that Nev had fallen in love with turned out to be Angela Wesselman, a middle-aged wife and mother
(MTV defines the term 'catfish' as a verb: 'Cat·fish [kat-fish]: To pretend to be someone you're not online by posting false information, such as someone else's pictures, on social media sites, usually with the intention of getting someone to fall in love with you.')
Swarbrick's comments were in reaction to reports that a heartbreaking story about the death of Te'o's girlfriend was all a lie.
The Hawaiian said during the 2012 season that Lennay Kekua, his girlfriend, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te'o's grandmother died.
The story of how Te'o and his girlfriend met had previously been chronicled in various news outlets and photographs of the girl were plastered all over the internet and in newspapers across the country.