Published: 02/26/2025By: Toby Jacob
Catfish scammers are difficult to deal with, and these scammers are known for constantly messaging or calling their victims. If you have discovered a catfish phone number, or if you want to check whether or not a phone number you have belongs to a catfish scammer, you might be wondering how to conduct more research. Our article tells you more about catfish scammers and what to do with a catfish phone number.
What Is a Catfish?
A catfish is a person who steals the information, images, and personal details of another person and creates an online persona pretending to be that person. This is a type of scam, and the catfish scammer may take elements from many people online and compile them into a profile that they think is believable and likely to give them contact with others online.
Catfish profiles are most commonly encountered on dating websites, but they can also easily be found on social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter.
The goal of a catfish scammer is generally to try and lure people into talking to them and developing a closer relationship with them. Over time, the catfish will start to ask for money, gift cards, and personal information; these details allow the catfish scammer to trick the person into constantly sending them money or stealing the victim’s identity.
For the victim, catfish scammers are incredibly harmful to encounter as they prey on the victim’s emotions, their desire to find a friend or romantic partner, and the victim’s money and personal information. While the victim might think they are talking to someone real who is interested in them, all the scammer cares about is getting as much money and information as possible.
How Can I Tell If Someone Is a Catfish?
Catfish scammers range from easy to figure out to more difficult scammers that pride themselves on being almost undetectable. If you regularly use the internet to make friends and speak to people, it’s essential that you take the time to learn about common signs of a catfish. Learning this can protect you from falling victim to catfish scams.
Signs that you are dealing with a catfish include:
- Their profile does not have many friends and followers, or the profile is a brand-new profile with limited pictures
- The profile picture stays exactly the same, and there are never any updates on the profile’s details and information
- The person avoids video calls and phone calls, or they only phone call and never show you their face
- The person constantly makes excuses for why they can’t meet up, including being trapped in a foreign country or deployed with the military
- The person makes outrageous claims such as dealing with serious crimes at their home, or they profess their love quickly; they may also claim to want to run major business deals with you
- The person soon asks for money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency to be sent to them in order to ‘help’ them out of their situation, or so they can book a ticket to visit the victim
- The stories that the person tells do not add up, or they make claims that cannot be true
If you notice one or more of these signs, stop talking to the catfish as soon as possible and block or report their number. This stops them from contacting you and potentially drawing you back into a scam.
Catfish Phone Number: Tracking Suspicious Texts and Calls
While not every catfish will use a phone number to contact you (some catfishes prefer to work on dating apps and social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook), many catfishes will try to get your personal phone number so they can text and call you, giving them constant access. Typically, catfishes will obtain your real number, but they will use fake or false phone numbers on their side, allowing them to text multiple people while still remaining somewhat anonymous.
If you suspect that the person you are talking to is a catfish, you will want to research the phone number that they are using. You can do this by taking the phone number and putting it into a reverse phone number search tool. The results can show you who the phone number’s owner is, but if the phone number is spoofed or a fake number, you might not see any results. This can indicate that the person you are dealing with is a scammer.
Additionally, there are certain phone number area codes and methods of messaging that can indicate someone is a scammer. For example, numbers that are based overseas while a person is claiming to be from the United States can indicate a scam, as can individuals who only want to talk on messaging services that work internationally, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook.
Where Do Catfish Scammers Look for Victims?
Catfish scammers are unfortunately prevalent in today’s digital age, where we communicate frequently online with other people. Most of the time, catfish scammers are connected to romance scams, which are scams that prey on people who want to connect romantically with another person. During these scams, the catfish will try to get on the victim’s good side and form a bond with them, eventually asking for things like money and personal identifying information.
The most common places to encounter a catfish scammer include dating apps, Instagram, and Facebook. Social media websites and dating apps where people can create fake profiles or falsify their information are very popular with individuals who engage in catfish scams.
If you do not trust a specific profile, you can take the image and run a reverse image search on it to try and track down the real owner of the image.
Can I Report a Catfish Scammer?
It is possible to report catfish scammers when you encounter them, though how you report them depends on the platform where you are interacting with the catfish scammer. In general, dating apps will allow you to report a profile, typically by providing you an option in the top left or right side of a profile, and this will remove the catfish profile from the platform. Social media apps like Facebook and Instagram also give you similar blocking and reporting options, as do messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.
If you are confused about how to report a catfish scammer on any of these platforms, you can look in the FAQs section of the platform or contact customer support to discuss your concerns.
What Do I Do With a Catfish Phone Number?
If you are dealing with a catfish and you have their phone number, you have a few different options. You can simply block the number and report it as a scam, which alerts your cell phone service provider to add that specific number to a list of suspicious numbers. In the future, contact from that number may be screened and filtered by different cell phone providers as a suspicious call.
You can also look up the catfish phone number you have to see who it really belongs to. However, this process can be hit or miss, as many catfish scammers will use burner numbers to avoid detection.
Can I Recover Money Sent to a Catfish?
Unfortunately, it can be very difficult or even impossible to recover any money that you have sent to a catfish scammer. Once you have sent cash, wire transfers, gift cards, or even cryptocurrency to a scammer, there is typically no way to get this returned to you. You may be able to report fraudulent transactions through your bank account or credit card, but this is made more difficult if you have authorized the transactions because you thought the catfish scammer you were talking to was a real person.
It’s important to be aware that if you publicly post about losing money to a catfish or make this known online, you may deal with a different type of scam known as a ‘recovery scam.’ This type of scam involves scammers pretending to help you recover your money. They will ask for payment and simply steal your money, passwords, or information provided to them, leaving you with even more money stolen and at risk of identity theft.
Protecting Yourself from Catfish
Catfish scammers are everywhere, and it’s important to understand how to identify catfish scammers and how to research catfish phone numbers so you can avoid accidentally falling victim to a scam. If you find a catfish’s phone number, you can use reverse phone number search tools to look up who might own the number in addition to blocking and reporting the phone number.
And remember, if something seems too good to be true, or if you are being asked to send large amounts of money and information online, you are likely dealing with a scam and should reevaluate the situation before taking the next steps.
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