Jilted wife used a catfish ruse on her husband; how serial-catfish Paul Bryan Gill was caught

An Australian private investigator has told how she helped expose a jilted wife trying to win back her husband. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

A jilted wife posed as a supermodel to try and win back the father of her child, in an elaborate catfish ruse.

The ex-wife knew what her former partner’s ideal woman was, so she created a fake online persona, including a gorgeous photo, to catch his attention.

“He went online and started talking to this amazing woman that was the woman of his dreams,” private investigator Julia Robson told the Eye Spy podcast.

“And they would have these long and deep conversations online and then they would be having these shorter conversations on the phone.

“But every time he tried to arrange a meeting with her, she would cancel at the last minute.

“Of course, he became pretty suspicious by this, and he ended up coming to me and saying, ‘I just want to know what’s going on here’,” Ms Robson said.

Private investigator Julia Robson specialises in unmasking catfishes. Picture: Rob Leeson

But it was Ms Robson who got the biggest surprise when she saw the woman’s profile photo.

“The photo that he provided was actually of a top model in New Zealand who I went to high school with,” she said.

“So I knew I knew pretty much straight away, ‘OK, we’ve got a problem here’.”

Ms Robson started investigating and concluded the woman was someone he knew well – and the more she dug, the more things pointed towards her being this former partner.

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And so she hatched a plan and set up surveillance and captured the truth on camera.

Catfishing has become the scourge of social media and thousands of vulnerable people have fallen victim to heartless scammers.

Ms Robson has had a string of catfishing cases including one man masquerading as a teenage boy to groom a 13 year old girl.

A catfish called ‘Charlie’, whose real name was Paul Bryan Gill.

When they finally met he assaulted her, and then locked his online profile to the highest security to avoid detection. But he was tracked down within hours by Ms Robson who passed on all his information to police.

“The problem was, was that all the girl knew about him was the name he had given her and his social media profile. She didn’thave his mobile phone number or email or any of those other details. And by the time the police got involved, he had removed her, blocked her from his profile and locked it to its highest security settings,” Ms Robson said.

Her most famous case was chasing a heartless catfish named “Charlie” who broke the hearts of a string of Australian women.

He sexually manipulated them and defrauding them of tens of thousands of dollars.

It took a seven year chase around the globe after the New Zealand conman, Paul Bryan Gill, aka Charlie, before Ms Robson, finally brought him to justice and he was jailed in New Zealand for fraud.

“Charlie is a lot of things, and I suppose being a catfish was the least of his problems, but yes, he did pose as a wealthy gentleman online in order to speak with his potential love interests,” Ms Robson said.

Julia Robson in Florence Italy while she was on a job there.

“The difference with him and other catfishes was that he went from the online world and he took it offline. And a lot of catfish profiles have no intention of ever meeting these people offline, because they know that they don’t exist. They’re fake profiles,” she said.

“By the time people went to the police station and police started gathering these reports of the same individual ripping these people off, he’d already left town … I realised that he was covering so many different cities and countries and jurisdictions that no one police force was going to take control of this case. And if I didn’t do it, probably no one else would.”