Robin Bailey’s catfishing saga: The unmasking of the ‘Italian Stallion’ and the dark side of data platforms

The identity of the man dubbed the ‘Italian Stallion’ who catfished Brisbane radio host, Robin Bailey, has been revealed, including how he got her number.

Brisbane radio host, Robin Bailey, has unmasked the identity of her catfisher, following an ongoing investigation to unmask the man she calls the ‘Italian Stallion’.

But even more shocking was the method he employed to access her private phone number.

Bailey, who previously received unsolicited texts from a man claiming to be a 47-year-old Italian man last month, was puzzled and concerned as she admitted that she “doesn’t give out her number to anybody”.

Radio host Robin Bailey opens up about catfishing experience. Photo: Instagram @kiis972bne

This led her to engage with the mysterious sender, dubbing him the “Italian Stallion”.

In a bid to solve the mystery, she, along with co-host Kip Wightman, confronted the ‘Stallion’ live on-air on August 22.

The plot thickened when Bailey and Wightman discovered that the phone number was registered under a different name.

“We tried calling the man … the name that he gave (on his voicemail) is not the same name he gave Robin,” Wightman announced to listeners.

In a pursuit of the truth, Bailey sought the services of ‘PI Dave’ from Austrace Investigations. On September 2, the private eye apprehended the supposed ‘Italian Stallion’ at his Brisbane residence, where, dressed only in his pyjamas, the catfisher came clean.

He turned out to be a 27-year-old local.

“I engaged him in conversation about the text messages … Initially, he denied it, but eventually acknowledged he was behind the messages,” Dave said.

When probed about his intentions, the catfisher’s motive was simply loneliness.

“He’s just a really lonely guy, I guess. He’s just looking for some sort of companionship. That’s what he does on a Saturday night was to contact people engaging in conversation,” Dave added.

KIIS 97.3FM Robin Bailey, Terry Hansen and Kip Wightman

Post-confrontation, Bailey received an apology text in which he confessed his deceit.

“I’m texting you to know who I am – I’m sorry, I’ve caused harm to you and made you scared. I’m going to delete your number and not contact to you again, I’m sorry,” the text message read.

But more astonishingly, he divulged the means by which he procured her number: the online platform, Rocket Reach.

Bailey informed listeners, “when you google them (Rocket Reach), it says ‘easy to find real time verified data for 700 million professionals, across 35 million companies worldwide’ and ‘find anyone’s personal or work email, phone number and social media profile’.”

This personal data, alarmingly, is understood to be scraped from public sources, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as corporate, media, and people and phone directory websites.

Founder of Internet Safe Education, Brett Lee, weighed in on the issue, stating that although data scraping is legal, when it ends up in the hands of individuals with questionable intentions, the outcome can be distressing.

Robin Bailey at the Dress for Dignity launch.

“Sometimes they hide it under the guise that it’s for legitimate purpose, but they make it so easy for others to get access to it and to use it. And purely by its functionality, it can encourage people to make that choice and it can put people like you in a very bad position through no fault of your own,” he told Bailey on-air.

Taking measures into her own hands, Bailey, with assistance from her radio station’s legal team, initiated the difficult process to remove her details from Rocket Reach.

“It’s taken about a week for me to get me off it, and that was by requesting with the help of our legal team that they removed the information,” she said.