What to Know
In 2010, Nev Schulman’s documentary, Catfish, gave a name to individuals pretending to be someone else online. They sit behind a screen and make people fall in love with them. Sadly, the stories they tell and the images they share are not real. Catfishing causes significant emotional pain and leaves people heartbroken. As we learned from Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, it can also lead to jail time.
A woman named Meghan Elizabeth recently shared her story on Facebook about a potential catfishing scheme from her teenage years in the 1990s with a person she met on AOL. Thirty years later, Meghan wants the truth, and a dedicated group of more than 13,000 people is by her side to help.
Meghan met Jacob in an AOL chatroom.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the internet was a very different place. The fact that we could communicate with total strangers across the world from the comfort of our own homes was a brand new and exciting adventure. Meghan, who grew up in Connecticut, posted about her online relationship with a boy named Jacob in a public Facebook group. The post got so much attention; she started her own group dedicated to finding the mystery football player from Texas.
“I started digging through boxes of childhood belongings my dad had packed up and found more letters, cards, and photographs from Jacob. That’s when I noticed some of the photos were dated in the 1980s even though they were supposedly taken in the late 90s. That’s when I really started questioning whether Jacob was ever a real person,” Meghan explained.
Meghan and Jacob became very close.
Meghan wrote that she met Jacob online when she was 15 and he was 16. They spoke on the phone daily, and though they never met, she fell deeply in love. Jacob apparently didn’t want anyone else to have Meghan. She claimed he controlled her in their long-distance relationship that went from flirting to sexually explicit conversations. “I genuinely believed I was going to marry him someday,” Meghan wrote.
She posted photos, letters, and stories about Jacob that immediately set internet sleuths in motion. Something about Meghan’s story didn’t seem right.
Meghan never met Jacob.
But she did meet a woman named Julie, who claimed to be Jacob’s mother, and his brother, Sam. They traveled to Connecticut and stayed with Meghan’s family, but Jacob didn’t come with them. Eventually, Jacob and Meghan’s relationship fizzled out, but she never stopped wondering what happened to him. Recently, Meghan attempted to find Jacob online, but there wasn’t a trace of him. She did find Julie, but the mother apparently wanted nothing to do with Meghan.
“Based on everything I’ve uncovered, I’m certain I was being catfished for years. I suspect the person behind Jacob may have been his mother, Julie, and I am determined to find out,” she wrote. “It makes me absolutely sick to think I may have been having those intimate conversations with a grown adult, potentially even someone I knew as his mother and trusted. I was only 15 and Julie would have been 39. The thought that someone may have manipulated me into falling in love with them while pretending to be a teenage boy is disgusting.”
Meghan has many supporters.
Meghan received many questions, but just as much support after sharing her story. She paused her group for a few days to take a break from speculation, bullying, and feedback.
“Hi Meghan, I’m one of the people who joined that first night; no idea why the Search Squad post appeared on my feed. I’m in the UK. I hope you get some answers. Jacob might not have been real, but your supporters have are,” a follower wrote.
“I hope this story encourages anyone having long-distance relationships with people that they have never met to thoroughly evaluate their personal situation and little more,” another person added.
In an update on November 9, 2026, Meghan shared a message of appreciation.
“To the thousands of people who have shown me kindness, compassion and support, THANK YOU! I genuinely appreciate you, and I’m sorry that the behavior of a few has brought us to this point,” she wrote. “I’m not giving up on finding the truth. I’m just done allowing strangers on the internet to treat my trauma like entertainment and then attack me for trying to protect myself.”
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