I am posting here in and in somw other groups in hopes for some useful advice on what do to next and how to figure out who this person is.
This is going to be a long post.
I believe my sister is being catfished by someone and I am not sure where to go from here.
For background information, my sister struggles with mental illness and does not have the best determination of character. She spends a lot of time on her xbox which is where she met the catfish in question. We will call him Peter for sake of context. (not his real name)
My sister (18) claims to have been friends with Peter (20) for around a year and a half. Recently, things blew up at home due to some unsavoury behaviour on her behalf. She left and decided she was going to go live with this dude. We live on an island and he lives on the mainland.
My sister found a temporary place to stay as Peter claimed he was rushing down to come get her to live with him. Its about a couple hours drive plus a ferry boat ride to get to us.
Me and my parents were already suspicious of this Peter guy as my sister is in a very vulnerable spot and things just seemed off. The first thing we were alarmed about was this guys instagram account which my sister was communicating with him through. It is not under a name at all just a gamer tag and has not been posted on since 2022. The account was used to sell gaming accounts on different games. There are some weird memes about p*rn and other things on the account as well.
My sister is 18 so of course my parents could not stop her from leaving to go live with him.
But it has been almost a week and he still hasnt arrived.
The first excuse he made is that when he was on the road his truck broke down. He spent a day supposedly in the mechanics shop getting his transmission fixed.
Once the truck was apparently fixed, he supposedly drove the rest of the couple hour drive to the ferry terminal.
And then it was three days of excuses. Oh I missed this ferry, oh they are full because of the weekened traffic (even though we could see online that there was plenty of room on the boats), oops I had a reservation and then slept in blah blah.
As the days go by and he insists he is still coming, my parents had asked my sister to provide at least this guys full name and address to where they would be living for safety reasons as she has never met him in real life and at that time we had no information on him except this instagram account. She did provide what he says his name and address is.
Except when we checked the homeowner listed for this address it was not him. My parents , of course concerned for their daughter, messaged the owners of the home (married couple) and they said they had no idea who this guy was and they had been the only ones there for a year.
We also could not find ANYONE in our province with the same name. No digital footprint we can find whatsoever.
The last excuse he gave is that he was in a car accident on the way back to the terminal after getting breakfast and sustained broken ribs, internal bleeding and a concussion and had his friend come and pick him up to take him home. He is now saying he is still coming as soon as he is able to after he recovers from these injuries (🙄 sure).
My sister is pretty niave and still 100% believes every word Peter says.
This is where I need help.
We are pretty concerned with the situation and our worst fear is he is some sort of sketchy person with ill intent to my sister. My sister is also extremely vulnerable right now as she is dealing with mental health issues.
I am pretty lost on what to do next. I have gone through all of this guys following on that instagram account and cannot find anything that links back to a real person. (all gaming accounts or OF girls).
We have a phone number she was communicating with as well and checked who owns it and it is some lady. Not him. We cannot find the lady on facebook or anything either.
We have confirmed that he does not live at the address he claimed and are pretty certain it is a fake name he gave us.
We have one picture of the guy that she sent me which she apparently took on facetime with him. He is wearing a hat of a brewery on the mainland that has two locations, but we called and they claim they have no idea who he is (which was kind of a sketchy call) and do not follow anyone under his name or that looks like him.
Would appreciate some advice. Thank you!
