Catfish are out there, the majority of us figured that out last month. More than ever, professional athletes are wary of starting a relationship with one of their groupie-followers on Twitter.
This morning, Chad Johnson received a tweet from one of his attractive followers, @RahitaBella. Chad was enticed, but cautious, going as far as directly asking if that was truly her picture:
To prove that she was not a catfish, @RahitaBella linked to a picture of one of her Instagram posts:
It was good enough for Chad, and @RahitaBella posted another link to an Instagram picture:
https://twitter.com/RahitaBella/status/298041706031489024
(Tweet has since been deleted, see bottom of post)
Doing my best Nev, san chest hair, I ran Google searches using the images tweeted by @RahitaBella. Interestingly enough, there was a hit on one of the images. The image that @RahitaBella sent to Chad originally, and that is also cropped as her profile picture, was found posted on the site Fiverr, a social marketplace. The user associated with that image was named @rachel27, offering to “model your product for $5:”
No one has asked her to model anything.
There are many possibilities that come from this. For one, this could actually be a page created by @RahitaBella whose real name could be Rachel. However, around the time this account was created (January 10th), @RahitaBella never tweeted about it. If you made an account on a marketplace, would you not want as many people to view that page as possible? Nine days ago, when the most recent marketplace ad by @Rachel27 was posted, there was no tweets mentioning it by @RahitaBella. In fact, @RahitaBella has never tweeted about @Rachel27 or Fiverr. Even though it is possible that the @RahitaBella Twitter profile and the @Rachel27 Fiverr profile are connected beyond the picture, I find it doubtful. The way I see it, someone used @RahitaBella’s profile to create the @Rachel27 account. The picture in question is found no where else online. Google searches for the other pictures used in @Rachel27′s Fiverr profile end without matches.
The Twitter account @RahitaBella seems legitimate. There is plenty of interactions between her and her friends, as well as pictures that do not have matches elsewhere on the web. @RahitaBella is approaching 3,500 tweets, all of which follow the same pattern. It is doubtful that a catfish would create a profile months in advance and make thousands of tweets before trying to latch onto Chad Johnson.
But who knows, I could be wrong.
I have sent @RahitaBella a tweet with a link to the @Rachel27 Fiverr account, asking if that account is hers, and am now awaiting a response:
[Update: 8:41]:
@RahitaBella responds and I make a request to end this catfish possibility:
https://twitter.com/RahitaBella/status/298063043844263937
[Update: 8:46]:
She agrees, but says she will do it later:
https://twitter.com/RahitaBella/status/298064454753587200
[Update: 9:21]:
@RahitaBella’s tweets to me as well as her second tweet to Chad Johnson that included a second instagram picture has since been deleted.
[Update: 2/4/13 - 5:25]:
@RahitaBella never posted the picture that she said she would. Chad Johnson is following her on instagram and has asked for a picture with the date just as I did.
