“Unveiling the Elaborate Catfish Scam: How a Mystery Woman has Duped Social Media Stars and Celebrities for 15 Years”

A catfish has stolen the identities of influencers to hoodwink sports stars and celebs on social media and dating websites in an elaborate scheme that goes back up to 15 years. 

Known as the ‘GAA Catfish’ the tale of the mystery woman became a sensation in Ireland in 2022 when she targeted comedian and podcast host Johnny ‘B’ O’Brien.

Realising the woman he’d met on Instagram didn’t exist after she failed to show in person for a date, he made a podcast episode about the whole affair and it soon emerged that the same woman had been targeting celebrities and sports stars in the GAA – Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Assocation. 

What’s more she had stolen the identities of popular influencers to create fake dating app and social media profiles, including Faye Louise Brennan who has more than 116,000 TikTok followers.

London-based influencer Lea Broc – the ex-girlfriend of Love Island’s Casey O’Gorman – also had her photos stolen and used by the catfish, who has created aliases including ‘Cora O’Donovan’ and ‘Aoife Kennedy’ to target an estimated 40 men in the entertainment and sports world in Ireland. 

Earlier this year, it emerged that the catfish is the subject of an official police probe in Northern Ireland after the PSNI received a complaint of alleged harassment. 

And in a further twist, just this week, a teacher from Armagh named Niamh Farrell who works at Coláiste Éanna in South Dublin, claimed she has been wrongly outed as the Catfish. 

She appeared at the High Court in Dublin where she was granted a short-term injunction preventing the school from continuing disciplinary proceedings against her arising from the allegations. 

The story first rose to prominence on the popular podcast The 2 Johnnies – presented by Johnny ‘B’ O’Brien and Johnny ‘Smacks’ McMahon in 2022.

They released a two-part series, called the GAA Catfish, in which they warned about the dangers of catfishing – which is defined as ‘the practice of pretending on social media to be someone different, in order to trick or attract another person’ by the Cambridge Dictionary.

Johnny B explained that following the break-up of his relationship, an Instagram account supposedly belonging to a beautiful woman named Cora O’Donovan started following him.

‘Last year, I became single. It’s never easy, no matter what way it goes. And in January, around Christmas time, this girl follows me on Instagram,’ he recalled.

‘She’s absolutely stunning. Drop-dead gorgeous. She’s from Limerick and has 15,000 followers, and it’s followed by a few people I know personally.

‘So, one night I’m looking at her stories and I said, “Go on. I’ll send her an old DM”.’

After a few conversations, they made plans to meet in person, but she ended up canceling every time. 

The plot then thickened when the two Johnnies were enjoying a night out in Dublin, and Johnny B received a message from Cora who said she could meet them in a popular pub in the city.

When they arrived at the pub, they were met by a woman who was supposedly Cora’s housemate. For the purposes of the podcast, they gave this woman the pseudonym Nicky.  

They reported that they never met Cora that night, or saw anyone who looked like the photos from the Cora O’Donovan account.

The story did not end there though: the following day, messages were sent from the Cora account to Johnny B inviting him to her house for breakfast, which he accepted. There, he met Nicky, who said that Cora had popped out and would return soon. 

However, after waiting for some time and having breakfast, Johnny B decided to leave, getting a lift from Nicky from Dublin to Tipperary.

The two Johnnies discussed how Cora kept failing to show in person, and they concluded that Cora did not exist and that ‘Nicky’ was the catfish behind the fake account. 

Johnny B said: ‘I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but in this story I was very much taken for a fool.’

He explained how they now believed Nicky had taken photos from other people’s social media accounts and created fake personas.

In a follow-up podcast they revealed they had been contacted by multiple men saying they had been catfished by the same person. 

One was a sports star who had developed an online relationship with a woman named ‘Britney McInerney’, but when they were meant to meet for a date she didn’t show because she’d supposedly ‘slipped into a coma’.

However, ‘Britney’ did introduce him to her housemate – again given the pseudonym Nicky – and he ended up meeting her in real life.  

The athlete said that Nicky had also turned up at the funeral of his brother.  

Johnny B said: ‘Here’s the thing. This is something that you see on Catfish the television show and you think “that only happens in America”. 

‘This has happened in Ireland to a lot of people and a lot of people that we all know in the entertainment industry in the GAA, everywhere.’

They discovered that the catfish had also created fake accounts for siblings, co-workers and friends, which would interact with each other to make her profile look genuine.  

None of the men she targeted have been publicly identified, but they include inter-county Gaelic footballers in three Ulster counties, managers and another sports professional from Northern Ireland. 

Johnny Smacks said: ‘We’re never going to reveal the identity of anyone that’s connected to this story. All we can hope is that this catfishing stops and anyone who is tempted to do something realises how wrong that is.

‘And also there was nothing illegal in this, there’s nobody who has been asked for money or tried to be scammed from these accounts. We need to state that. But look, these people have been affected by this, their lives have been affected and it needs to stop.’

After the episode they were flooded with messages from men who said they had been targeted by the same catfish, with incidents dating back 15 years, as well as women who said their pictures had been used to create her fake personae. 

Following the success of the podcast, the BBC planned to make a documentary about the situation, but when the person they referred to as ‘Nicky’ declined to get involved, the two Johnnies halted the production. 

The story did not end here though.

In January of this year, the men released a third part of the series after being contacted by various men to say they had been catfished by a woman they believed to be Nicky, using the alias Aoife Kennedy. 

The account uses images of at least two influencers, and is believed to have been involved with numerous sports stars and media personalities.

They are Lea Broc, the ex-girlfriend of Love Island’s Casey O’Gorman, and Faye Louise Brennan.

A man who was referred to as ‘Conor’ appeared on the third show, revealing how he got on well with ‘Aoife’ after meeting on a dating app. But, he said, after they had been speaking for a while, she started making claims about trauma she had suffered in her life.

Among the traumatic stories she told, Aoife said she had been raped by a GAA player and had been forced to have an abortion.

Aoife is even said to have become embroiled with a GAA manager known as Manager Mick, though they never met in person.

Frighteningly, according to Faye, speaking to Goss.ie, she learned the Aiofe account was using her images after Aoife contacted her via DM during the Summer of 2023, when they were both in Marbella.

According to Faye, Aoife asked for a pub recommendation, where she could watch the GAA match in which her boyfriend was playing in, which Faye gave to her. 

As Aoife shared Instagram Stories of herself at the pub, tagging the player, Faye assumed it was all above board.

However, in June 2024, things took a darker turn when Faye again heard from the Aoife Kennedy account – a message sent after she had been outed as a catfish.

According to Faye, Aoife’s message asked Faye to ignore any messages sent from her GAA player boyfriend, telling her: ‘He’s gone crazy thinking I’m using your pictures, he thinks we’re the same person’.

When the boyfriend texted Faye, complete with screenshots of the photos used by the catfish as well as pictures of their conversations, Faye blocked the Aoife account, and thought little of it until realising after hearing the 2 Johnnie’s podcast that she had been involved.

According to Faye, she has discussed the issue with The 2 Johnnies, learning more about the situation from them.

She revealed how having her photographs stolen felt ‘weird’, and that it was creepy that men she had never met thought they were dating her.

She said that the Aoife Kennedy account didn’t feature her photos on the grid, but her images were shared in private DMs.

“The thing is, the pictures on her page weren’t me, but then any private messages were me, which is really weird,’ she said.

Adding that if there was anything she could do to prevent the situation from happening again, she would, adding that she especially felt sorry for the men who falsely felt they were falling in love with these women.

An additional unpleasant element of the story is that the catfish sent ‘intimate’ images’ to the men, saying she questioned where the fake accounts where finding these photos, and how intimate they were.

Speaking in their third instalment of the catfish series, the podcasters said: ‘In 2022, we never imagined revisiting The GAA Catfish. But as new stories emerged, we felt compelled to act.

‘This episode is not about shaming anyone but about raising awareness and preventing further harm. It’s time to address this issue and call on social media companies to do more to combat fake profiles.’

In addition, they featured clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne who explained why someone may behave in this way, noting that it is ‘not taken seriously enough’ when someone is ‘duped and betrayed by a catfish. 

‘It can completely disrupt your sense of trust and stability,’ she said.

As of reports published in January, the so-called GAA catfish was the topic of a Northern Ireland police probe following a harassment complaint. 

In a recent update the to the case, earlier this month, the teacher who claimed she had wrongly been identified as the GAA catfish was granted a short-term injunction which restrained her south Dublin school, Coláiste Éanna, from continuing the disciplinary process arising from the allegations, which she denies.