So what are we doing?
How are we going to do this? How did you envision this? Triptball or natural? My name is David Fisher. I'm an investigative reporter for the New Zealand Herald, and that is me speaking. Back in June twenty eleven, I was at a roadside food court on the Southern Motorway in Auckland. The Glamorous Life of a Journalist if you've
listened to episode one, I mentioned this meeting briefly. This happened a few months after my investigation into Natalia Burgess went live in The Herald on Sunday, The Facebook Predator, we called her. Then I exposed Natalia after learning she'd been impersonating a number of young women on social media. She'd been using their photographs to lure teenage boys and
young men into online relationships. It took me a while to get Natalia to talk on the record, and I eventually met up with her at another glamorous dining destination, the Muffin Break in Westfield Wall in South Auckland. During that time, I've been building a relationship with one of the women Natalia had impersonated. It was Natalie's photographs that
she'd been using for one of her main personalities. Natalie and her mum, Kushler, had been fighting Natalia for several years at that point, with Natalie's photographs being used as the basis for Laura West, one of Natalia's main characters. Laura, you may remember, was the young woman killed off by Natalia in a fictional car crash at the end of twenty ten. We picked this truck stop as an in between location. I picked Natalia up and drove her there.
In the article about the meeting between Natalia, Natalie, and Kushler, I wrote about how Natalia couldn't take her eyes off Natalie. As I sat there and watched the two speak, I could see Natalia reaching out on a number of occasions to touch New on the arm. She was clearly enamored to meet her victim, to meet the woman whose face she'd used, But it took some prompting to get to the point of what we've come there to do. We've been sitting here for twenty five minutes half now. I
haven't heard you apologize yet. Do you feel you need to?
Yeah, of course I do.
I am absolutely.
So heartfully sorry that I here's your naders for all of these people, plus now plus as I was reminded that I forgot that.
Plus one of your friend's daughters.
You know, yes, she was a little Yes, I said to Italia.
Actions are what sorry?
Story? You know, just the word actions?
What works?
Very late? Say sorry, sorry, sorry about the most You're actually out there? Any help, confessing everything, putting this to a stop once and for all. Then that's when I'm to believe that your.
Li was finished.
I mean I was, so you carry on the stands your can you? Because I mean no, just be so out like you said on sixteen minutes, you know, just for.
Yourself, yourself.
The three women discussed a lot during this conversation. We'll dive back into this in a later episode when we go more into what Natalie was up to prior to her and I crossing paths in twenty eleven. We've been about an hour in that sticky cheap food cart when I said this to Natalia. You say you want to stop, and you say you want to get better, and you say you don't want to do it anymore. Doing that is going to be really hard, and you're going to have to give things up, and you're going to have
to make yourself do it. Natalia told me and Natalie she wanted to stop listening back to that conversation and that assurance. Thirteen years on, almost are naive taking Natalia at her word, because, as you've probably worked out by now, Natalia didn't stop in twenty eleven.
So my name is Crystal Journa and I was originally born in New Zealand. I've moved over to Australia when i was twenty seven and I'm now.
Thirty seven, so going on ten years living here.
Crystal emailed me towards the end of twenty twenty two. She told me that a woman called Natalia Burgess had been using her social media images, and that she'd done so for almost a decade, crafting false identities that were then used to trick men and women. Back in twenty eleven, Natalia had used such images of other people to create a world of danger and drama and excitement, though she
pulled in believed everything was real. A few years after she was exposed, after I had outed her, Natalia ended up in jail. I thought that was the end of her story, but when Crystal reached out to me, I discovered that jail was just a short break in a two decade fantasy that Natalia has played out online. For the past year, investigating the extent of Natalia's online lies, spoken to many of the men and women that have fallen victim to those deceits, and tried to find out
what can be done to stop her. I didn't think I've investigating Natalia again, but now that I am, I'm starting to wonder if I missed the real story the first time it was told. I'm David Fisher and this is Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer.
My name's Lucy L.
Jenna and I currently live in the UK. My daughter is Crystal Jenna who lives in Surface Paradise in Australia, and she's basically had her profile used by somebody called Natalia Burgers for years now, which has impacted a lot on her life, because, yeah, she's been selling her photos and basically been trying to pretend that she is the person behind the pho shows.
Crystal has been living an awesome surfers Paradise life since arriving in Australia in twenty thirteen. If you haven't been to Surfers, as the locals call it, you've probably seen images of it associated with Australia, the skyline of apartment buildings towers above Golden Sand beaches. The local toroism organization Destination Gold Coast uses words like iconic to describe it, calling it an entertainment playground famous for world class nightlife, holiday vibes and a pumping atmosphere.
I currently own a couple of businesses, one being a cleaning company, which I've been doing for the last three and a half years.
And I've got a couple of staff that also work for me, so that's great.
And I also have a woman's clothing boutiques, so rangers from like women's active wear, cocktail dresses, and swimwear as well.
And that was a lot of what Crystal used social media for pushing her business, showing fresh clothing designs, young, cool creations perfect for the Gold Coast. But that's not all that was on Crystal social media. She works hard, but she plays hard too, absolutely living what she calls her best life. I asked Crystal's mom to describe her daughter. It's hardly an unbiased view, but this is the life that Crystal made.
She's so social.
Her photos are fun like Obviously she's always having a good time. Number One, she's super attractive, so she's got very colorful photo. She's always smiling, laughing, you know, obviously having fun out with her friends.
She's got a jet ski.
So she's out at the beach, She's out with her dogs a lot. You know, they're just photos that would appeal to a lot of people because it looks like she's having a really good life. She's got everything going on for here, so I think that's attractive to most people.
Crystal's life was so appealing she became the new face of a cluster of false identities used by Natalia Burgess since twenty sixteen.
I would say, stemming back almost eight years now, I've had random contact with males that all approach me and say, hey, I've come across a profile with all your photos.
I've been talking to like.
A version of use of a cat versh version of you, not realizing that you're actually a totally different person.
This is how it usually unfolds. And when I say usually, Crystal's been through this quite a few times over quite a few years. It's generally, but not always, men who approach her they will have connected with the false profile and in most cases had some sort of prolonged engagement
with a person who has generally been called Kaylei. That's the chosen first name, and it's an interesting one because you might recall from the first episode there was the name Natalia Burgess used for the child she invented, the child whose fictitious mum, Laura West, died in that car crash. Kaylie is the name used for almost all of Natalia's fakes, since she came out of jail the same first name
and a succession of surnames. And when Crystal was told of and directed to those fake profiles, there was a pattern that developed when she tried to visit them.
So usually I'm blocked.
My personal profile on my Facebook or any social media is blocked.
To see how her face is been used, Crystal has to ask the men again usually men, but not always, to send her screenshots.
It'll be any photos that I potentially had, well, any photos that I actually.
Had that were public on either my.
Instagram or my Facebook, so anything that I had it ahead in or anything that I might have also been tagged on from friends pages. It would have usually myself as a profile picture. She also used multiple of my friends photos and made other profiles on Facebook using their photos as well, and they would all the profiles would talk to each other, I guess, making it look more authentic like And.
It's not just that Natalia has used Crystal's face. She also mined crystal social circles for images to support the new Kaylee false identities. She's even taken photographs of Crystal's friends' children off their social media accounts and use them, claiming they are children of her own.
This Kaylee person has all these other friends. The profile will have multiple selfies of myself in whatever caption she chooses to use. Initially, I was a single woman. Over time, I've become now as single map. She's used my friend's children's boat I was from also mostly from Instagram.
I find there's where she finds a lot of her content.
Now it's the same pattern as twenty eleven, but now with photos of real children, not just the baby voice that Natalia would use on phone calls. Crystal doesn't have children, well she does if you include her beloved dogs. But by taking photographs of other people's children, possibly even images in which Crystal features, Natalia is able to add another layer to the fancy world she's creating for Crystal, this
has gone beyond annoying. There was the awkwardness of men contacting her and what they expected.
I mean, obviously, the person she's trying to be is a lot different to who I am. I mean, like her alias of me, it does seem like a very different profile to how I live my life and who I.
Am friends with. I think she almost plays like, you know, I'm.
A single woman looking for love, and that's how she ends up talking to these men.
I'm almost like a helpless person.
In her the way that she promotes me, like you know, single woman just looking for love and someone to help her out.
And there was the sinking feeling of having photographs of big events in her life taken and news for another purpose. But there was also the impact on Crystal's business. As a fashion designer and retailer, Crystal needs to be able to show off her weirs. Social media provides a great platform to do so, and modeling from Crystal and her group of friends provides a great showcase and a personal
connection between the viewer and the designer. But not so much when every photograph is a new chapter in Italia's story.
I did start making all of my photos and everything private, so you know, my social media, my Instagram account is our private. My Facebook, I've borne and physically changed all my photos so it's friends only to try and stop it from happening. But on the odd occasion, because I do own a couple of businesses, I might open up.
My profile, for instance, for a week or so did potentially do some advertising.
And I mean within a week, all my new photos that I might have will be taken and a new profile will be made again.
So just literally any photos that she can get hold of, she will use.
The impact isn't felt solely by Crystal. Being a parent means you never stop worrying about your kids, feeling protective of them, wanting the best for them, and that was Lucille for Crystal, along with a growing realization that what was happening in the online world was having a real world impact.
She's quite an emotional person as well. She's quite deep and you know, she looks like this, well she was blonde at the time she's start now, but she looks like this, like cute little blonde, you know. But she's actually a very very deep person, and especially when she found out that these guys were getting seriously hurt through this. It really impacted on her, so she had to take
down all her profiles. Social media plays a big part in her business because she needs to advertize and she's part of the brand of her business, so it impacted on everything this.
Sial told me that during the years this unfolded, there was a time when Crystal was struggling with depression. That's not necessarily because her life and her friend's life was constantly being mined for catfishing content. But it shows, says these hell that perfect life photos you see on social media aren't necessarily a reflection of what's really happening.
I see that, like you said, the photos of somebody and you think, well, their life's perfect, they must have the best life ever. But in the background, there are a lot of things going on with people, including her. So for her, it was like a massive impact, especially on her financial side, because she just couldn't put anything public up because as soon as she put something public up, Natalia would take the photos and create another profile with them, and she didn't want to hurt any anyone.
Else to get hurt.
But also she's got to run a business.
As well.
So yeah, it was really really difficult.
After I first heard from Crystal, I made contact with some of the men whom Natalia had lured in using her photos. Some of these men who were tricked by Natalia's profiles would sooner than later come across the real Crystal online, and they mistakenly thought she was the woman with whom that she had secrets and sexual experiences online. Since Crystal had spoken to them, she was able to put me in touch with them. So who are these men? Largely good dudes living complicated lives.
I'm Jaden Marin and I did own a beekeeping company for the past ten years.
I'm currently in a rehab Jaden has a meth and feedomin addiction for which he's seeking help. It was an addiction that contributed to the prison sentence he had just finished serving when he met Natalia, or rather he met Kaylie Rose.
I just recently got out of jail after spending five and a half months in there. So I got out, and I might have been out a couple of weeks and then got back into drug using, and I was using quite a lot of myth then. So I was talking to quite a few women because I just got out of jail, basically, So.
This was Jaden lonely, wasted and a long time without genuine warmth, cruising Facebook with hope in his heart and meth andphetamine in his brain. It's not a great combination for rational decision making. I met with Jaden when he was in a rehab clinic in Auckland. He's trying to get to grips with the addiction that led to a general breakdown of life in then prison. It was the right move and I hope it goes well for him.
He was clear minded when we spoke, and he did so because he recognized how easily someone could be sucked into Natalia's world. So Jaden was sitting around wasted Facebook, scrolling and thinking about women.
I've seen the friend rest or whatever. And then there was a photo of quite a good looking young blonde lady and I had a quick flick through the photos, obviously went through her page a little bit, and she was constantly posting updates, probably maybe four times a day, constant photos out and stat us updates.
And this and that. At this stage and for some time, Jaden thought the woman who contacted him was as she presented herself. They started chatting, and one thing that sticks with Jaden is how eagerly the false accounts sent messages. Natalia drove the conversation with question after question. Jaden, meanwhile, wasn't the most ideal conversation partner.
Obviously, I was high on drugs, preoccupied with other people around me, doing my own thing, and I was trying to just answering a question. Then there'd been another question come through all of these messages having EXO on the end of them, so obviously being a male or that kind of caught my attention, like, oh, a beautiful woman, and then she's engaging in the conversation.
Jaden's interest was beyond Pete. He wanted to know who this woman was, so went from messenger to the page profile.
Obviously I've gone through that a Facebook page. Was got quite interested and they looked at the woman.
The detail that was in the profile was compelling. When Jaden began exploring the fake profile, it was the detail that convinced him that she was real.
She was uploading I'd say, two photos every day and they're all different, Like whoever had done this, They'd put a lot of work into this fake Facebook profile and they muster. They had quite a lot of photos of Crystal. Like, you went through the profile and it just looked like a normal Facebook profile. Yeah, it looked quite genuine.
Jaden wasn't the only person at his house that night. There was a bit of a gathering going on, part of what was distracting him from a deeper conversation with the woman he had just met online. But the real difference to the busy house that night was that, by a chance, one of those people present knew the real Crystal.
There was maybe a five year old child and a photo but with darker skin, and he noticed straight away, He's like, she doesn't have a kid here on with this profile.
As they looked more deeply, other cracks and the fiction emerged. It took a couple of hours digging and a suspicious mind already triggered by the photographs of the child, but there were a number of tales which exposed the page as fake. Then they made contact with the real Crystal.
He was friends with the actual Crystal on Facebook, and we made contact with her and then let her know what we had found out.
What it followed is not unfamiliar to Crystal. The fake page was exposed shut down and Jaden added to the list of blocked people who couldn't access Natalia's page. This whole scenario playing out one drug addull evening and left Jaden with a feeling that hasn't shifted and why he spoke to me.
I find it quite disturbing. I talked to quite a few women while I'm single anyway, you know, I am a maleso. We do what we do. But I found it quite actually sickening and disturbing. Was always to the point where, you know, it made me sick of the stomach. Were what this woman was doing, half for what it was doing, partially with the effect that she was having on Crystal's life. But then if I'm just one of the people that she's talking to, how many more people out there is this happening to it?
I spoke to a few men who just didn't realize the extent of Natalia's deceit. When I told them I was doing a podcast about this. Many didn't want their voices heard. They didn't want people who might recognize them to connect their voice to the stories they told of the woman they met online. It speaks to the shame and the embarrassment that a lot of these men feel about being deceived in a lot of ways. They're like Jaden,
tough guys. There's staunch guys in the real world, guys who never really give a clue as to what's happening beneath the surface. I get a few of them to talk to me, some of them on the record, like Jared, who lives in Western Australia. These are his words read by a voice actor.
What you need to do is get her daughter help, because obviously she's got her daughter helping her with the lies and story as well. She used to call me in the morning saying she just wants a daddy that her own daddy doesn't want her.
After I told him there was no daughter. That was it. The message has stopped. And there's Jake, who lives in Auckland. Jake, well, he's been pretty messed up by the situation. When I first spoke to Jake, he was open to an interview, and then he wasn't, and then he goes to me. But when we did speak, he told me just how heavily invested he became in Natalia's world.
A guy committed suicide over it. That's where I would have been heading if I'd kept on with it.
Jake's likely referring to Peter Russell there, who we spoke about in episode one. But while it's the opinion of his mother an ex girlfriend that Natalia is responsible for his death, my experience is that it's extremely uncommon for there to be a single reason for suicide. Jake had a close connection to Natalia, so close and one that lasted long enough that she adopted his surname for some of her false characters Jake and Cayley because that's the
name she was using. Kaylie Rose were involved for around nine months.
We started talking a lot every day for a couple of months. I said we need to meet, and she wouldn't.
When talking about the guys that Natalia had been involved with, Jacob described them as really vulnerable, and they were vulnerable.
That is.
One man I spoke to lived in an isolated rural Australian town, some of those places that would disappear in a blast of sandy wind. For him, Natalia or Kaylee as he knew her, was a way out of the life he had Like the others. She promised him something that wasn't real, something that couldn't be because she wasn't real, but as is often the case with Natalia, it seemed real to him. For years, Crystal had no idea who was behind the fake profile. There were bread crumbs, little
clues along the way that hinted at a source. Sometimes there were phone numbers connected to the fake accounts, and when there were phone numbers, they were New Zealan numbers. It was a frustrating puzzle until Crystal heard from a friend back home.
I had him bessage from one of my friends back in New Zealand, Sophie, and she said, I think it's this woman.
She's made fake profiles of me in the past.
I've had issues with her for years and years and years.
So I'm Sophia Jarrett and my friends call me Sophie. Currently, I'm based here in Darwin and Australia. I encountered Natalia Burgesson about twenty eleven, and my most recent encounter.
With her yeah, probably a couple of years ago now.
So she's been a part of my life intermittently for the last however long.
Remember Abbe, Laura's sister, Abbey who called Bernie to tell who Laura had died back in episode one, Abby was created using the face of Sophie Jarrett, and not only Abby. Sophie has since encountered many false identities over the years, for which she holds Natalia responsible. The West sisters, Abbi, Laura, and the others seemed to have served a number of purposes.
Natalie would use the different accounts to message each other, discuss family matters and social activities, kind of putting meat
on the bones of a skeleton of falsehood. We know the Laura West fake identity went back to at least two thousand and eight, and that Laura's sisters were long a part of the identity and Natalia had built Sophie didn't actually discover Natalia had been using her image until twenty eleven, but we know now that Abby, as she was called, had been around for a while already.
So this was when Bibo was huge and everyone was on Bebo. My friends came across this montage, like a eulogy montage, with my face all over it, and so my friend Brooke was kind of panicked, like a U Okay, I've just seen this video. It says rip and it's got your face all over it, and I was sort of shocked.
And kind of didn't.
Really believe it, and I was like, no, I'm fine, I'm here, I'm at Auckland, I'm totally alive.
So Iphi got Brooke to send her a link to the video so that she could see it.
And it was one of those with some really sad funeral music on it and just all these photos of me saying rap atbe Williams. And that was the first that I'd ever been made aware that my photos had been used by someone else.
At that point, Sophie didn't know who Natalie Burgess was. No one did actually until April of twenty eleven, when I'd worked out that she was behind the fakes that were engaging with teenage boys. Nobody had any idea as to who was doing it, or how or what their motivations were. So for Sophie it was really unnerving to be sitting watching a funeral reel of photographs when she was supposed to be the person who had died.
To ladge a formal complaint and make police report about my images being used, I'd printed off all of the photos and because I found some BBO profile stuff and just everything I could find, and I printed off a stack of paper and brought it into the police station and said, this woman's.
Pretending to be me. What can I do about it?
At this point, I'm actually when I realized she was me online and I found out she lived in Auckland as well, I was actually really panicked, and I was actually really afraid for my personal safety because that's when I don't know what she's capable of. I'm is she actually talking me in real life? I posted a lot on social media about what I'm doing, and so I was actually kind of scared and wanted something to be done about it. And when I was there, they're like, well,
there's actually no laws against this right now. You know, in twenty eleven, there was no protection like identity theft prediction.
That's one part of the story we'll come back to later. Natalia's conviction in twenty thirteen and jail sentence of two years and two months was a relief for Sophie for her a Minton end to Natalia using her photographs as the face of Abbi. It also seemed as if justice of a sort had been served. There had been too a fear that the person who was using her image online might suddenly appear in her real life, and so Natalia going to prison also brought an end to that fear.
I thought that might be the last I had to deal with her, but it was a few years later
that things started popping up again. I went back and I was like twenty eighteen she had started profiles and again of me, and twenty nineteen another profile came out, and then twenty twenty one, it must have been another one came out like she's just and throughout I didn't realize it, but over those years that she'd been following me, she'd packed up on other friends like Crystal and another friend of mine, Soraya, and latch onto them too and started using.
Their profile photos.
But she got quite ballsy in twenty and eighteen and just started using my real name, And I thought, like, must be a gain to her, and it's got to be a stab at me for sure, just to start using my actual name on these fake profiles, Like you know, you try to stop me, but I can still find you and still use your photos, and I'm still doing what I'm doing.
When Crystal began to raise an alarm among her friends over her images being used for fake profiles, Sophie knew exactly who was behind it. This was twenty nineteen and Cristel was being approached online by people, mainly men, who believed she was the woman they had befriended online, and for some it went much further than simply being friends. Cristel was as much in the dark as Sophie Happen
years earlier, and she was baffled. She was being approached by complete strangers who acted as if they knew her well and even intimately in a way, it was a relief to know who was behind it. Was fascinating too, to discover that Natalia had taken steps to keep Crystal
from learning who she was. Natalia blocked her from accessing her Facebook page, and when she created false identities using Crystal's photographs Crystal's mum, Lucille, she wasn't blocked, and in just a few short years, she had seen the impact this was having on her daughter.
I think the biggest impact was when she found out what these guys had been through with Natalia, and to think that they thought it was her that was doing it, you know, like because she was the face behind everything that they felt like they were speaking to her when she knew nothing about it at all, and so that's sort of what I had to say to her, like, you know, it's not your fault, Like you've done absolutely nothing wrong with Natalia identified.
Lucille did what any parent would do. She bailed up the person who was making their child's life a torment. She did so over messenger and provided me the exchange with Natalia. This is an important piece of evidence because it removes any doubt Natalie was behind the false page. It's also important because it gives an insight into Natalia's world and her motivations, and also a real vulnerability. Here's that exchange, voice by two actors.
Hi there, my daughter just informed me. You've been using her photos to cat fish young boys. You have already been to jail for this, and we'll end up there again. Stop doing it. You are hurting multiple people and stopping yourself from entering into a real relationship. You're an attractive girl. Use your real photos and be you to meet someone who wants to be with you and not a fake you.
I'll stop doing it. I've handed the fake profile over to her mate. I think you're looking at the wrong girl. I'm the one in the back, the fat ugly four eyes one.
I know, the one with the glasses. You're not ugly at all. Stop being so hard on yourself.
This dialogue goes on for a bit. There's a back and forth on which Lucy Halle counsels Natalia over her appearance, being at ease with herself, discovering confidence, searching out those people at a church that can offer support. She tells Natalia that these physical things are skin deep. Here's the real Lucille speaking again.
So it looks like obviously she's got extremely low self esteem. So she finds herself very unattractive, and because of that, she uses the photos to try and get people to talk to her because she doesn't think if she uses her own profile that anyone would speak with her. And obviously, I think that's really untrue, because I think there's someone out there for everyone, and no matter what you look like, she someone.
Will accept her.
It might not be what she's looking for, but there will be somebody out there that accepts you as you are. And so I was trying to say to her, look, just be yourself and put yourself out there.
This exchange took place over a number of days. There's no hint of aggression or anger in Lucille's messages. If I was to find a way to describe the messaging, I'd say that Lucille as being a mum. She even went so far as to have a friend who's a psychologist speak with Natalia on the phone, and it seemed like a really positive exchange.
Thanks for all your help, and thank Crystal for being understanding about this. It shows what an amazing mum you are to bring up a daughter like this.
It's an addiction.
Once you break the habit, you will be fine.
I need to stop blaming everyone else for my messed up life and face it head on and come to peace with it, and then get on the right medication again.
When Natalia talks about the right medication, that's in the context of her telling Lucille she will once again seek mental health support. Natalia's struggles with mental health was something I was very conscious of when reporting in twenty eleven. We spoke then about the struggles she faced and how they were managed, and it's also been very much in
my mind when approaching the reporting again. They had for some time been a question in my mind as to whether it was fair or right to bring such attention to bear on Natalia. Ultimately, though, you're hearing this story because the more I investigated, the extraordinary scale of Natalia's catfishing became clear and the damage she was causing. I've done what I can to make sure she has the support she needs, and having done so, the nature of Natalia's behavior and the issues it raises need to be
publicly aired. Meanwhile, Lucille, being mum to Natalia.
Just feel better that you're not the only person like this. Loads of people are in the same situation. It's self esteem and confidence. You need to look in the mirror and see all the great things about yourself.
Thank you for being so understanding. You've got every right to be mad at me and want me locked up for this.
Just don't do it again, as it messes up the people whose photos you use and their lives are not as perfect as you think. Everyone has problems.
Natalia incredibly claims she never realized she was hurting anyone. I say incredibly because in twenty eleven, Natalia told me she knew she was hurting people, and she'd sat down with a woman whose face she'd used for the Laura West character. She had heard firsthand just how distressing it was. This was the last time Natalia told Lucial, and Natalia also told Lucille that she'd contact the police to hand herself in.
When I rang them, they had no idea what I was talking about and gave me the advice to hand over everything to Crystal or someone she trusts.
So she claimed to have done just that, telling Lucille that the key, usiname and password for the fake accounts have been surrendered to a friend of Crystal's. You can have it too, Natalia told Lucille, sending her a Gmail address and a password. Thanks, said Lucille, You're welcome, Natalie responded,
and that was the end of the conversation. And you know, Lucille was feeling pretty good about the way it worked out until she tried the password and it didn't work, and soon enough there were new profiles circulating with Crystal's face.
I thought after our conversation she might stop, because she seemed to get it, and she seemed to understand, you know, that she was doing wrong and that she should stole.
Here's the funny thing about this interaction between Lucille and Natalia. It's actually incredibly similar to one Natalia had with Natalie and her mum Kushler back when I first investigated this. There was the same reaching out between the mum and daughter and Natalia, and the same encouraging messages towards Natalia.
Just such a bright, buvely person and once you've got that help and you can.
Drawn your personality, yeah, I think that's I mean, I can't even get a boyfriend both, and it's not like you know, trying, but I'm interested days ago.
So let's just forget about Satalia of stuff now. So if you found a new voice, I'm like, I'm just but yeah, so awkward to lay my face, but it was your personality that just saying you know that you can't just go off by face value.
And Natalia even handed over her passwords to Natalie back then to give her control of the accounts that used her photos. But that's not where the similarities end. Back in twenty eleven, Natalie and Kushler were also concerned about what the law could do to stop Natalia.
Why is this not a criminal arrestment?
Of letters down the place a verts down? If they have done something to protect you and telling then you know you would you would have been probably you know much into recovery, because in my opinion, you're probably gonna need a lot of help.
To get that.
When you know an actidnaal that came out, the police, the laws was so quick to jump out putting a you know a law on there that you can't let's copyright music. But do you understand why don't you upload a picture to the Internet that's not copyright and anyone can use it, But if it's proven to be using in a in a bad manner, that there should be some law around them to put a stop to that.
Actually feel this case is so extreme.
It's the most extreme end of cyber in the restment. Yeah, that it could be used to shape using on all right, and so okay, this probably doesn't have any day, is it?
No, it's extreme ye.
Thirteen years later, Lucille was left wondering the same thing because when she realized that Natalia didn't stop that she carried on interacting with people as Kayleie using Crystal's face and photos. She started to turn to the law as well.
The only thing she can do is just keep reporting at but nobody seems to care.
I get a copy of the police file through New Zealand's Freedom of Information legislation Bristol. She signed a waiver so that police could bypass who writes to privacy and that allowed us to examine exactly what happened with her complaint. Crystal's call to police was made on January seven, twenty nineteen, where she's recorded as a New Zealander living in Australia. When I study the police report, the details are all there.
That Crystal's photograph has been used to set up a fake Facebook profile, that the person who did so Natalia, had become online ends with a man who was intending to send her a gift, and that during that call
between Natalia and the man, she dropped her phone. She had claimed a camera was broken so not able to be used for video chat, but when she dropped the phone, she must have bumped a button because clearly it did work and what it captured was a flash of black or brown hair, not the blonde hair that Crystal has
or the blonde hair that Kaylie was known for. Instead of sending a gift, he went searching for the real Crystal and found her, told her what had happened, and that's what led to Crystal calling police, not only did she call, but she followed up with a flood of screenshots evidence of her identity being hijacked and being used to fool others. This included an online conversation between Natalia and a friend of Christal in which Natalia admits she's
behind the fake profile. When people call police for help, call takers assign a code to the file to guide
the path the complaint will take. But I study Crystal's police report, I see that the call taker logged it as A two I. A two I is a general information code, an oddly generic code given Crystal's complaint alleges that Natalia was catfishing to scam jewelry and money, and the advice from the call taker that was for Crystal to talk to Australian police even though Natalia was in New Zealand, and to ask Facebook to remove the pages.
To be fair, that wasn't all police did. Crystal also got an email from a detective constable who had visited and spoken with Natalia, and the report notes Natalia made a confession in an email to Crystal. The detective wrote.
She used your photograph and apologized for doing so, but there has been no specific offense identified in relation to any criminal charges to be laid.
Within a month, Crystal had emailed the detective to report that despite the visit from police, Natalia had again set up a fresh Facebook page using one of Crystal's newer photographs. Then she emailed again a month later. In both cases, according to police records, Cristal's emails were logged, added to the file and precisely nothing was done. It feels like a good time is any to take us back to twenty eleven, while Crystal struggled to get people to take
her case seriously. In twenty nineteen, eight years earlier, Natalia was charged and then two years later she was sentenced to jail for two years and two months on three convictions. So what did she do then and what's so different now? Hattison is a sharp and experienced lawyer. He's wiry like a whippet. He's got a sense of energy about him and the CVE that stretches from New York to New
South Wales and backhead in New Zealand. Along the way, He's developed a depth of experience in tackling Internet related issues. Ahead of speaking, I gave Chris copies of the judge's sentencing notes from twenty thirteen and the two parole board reports written when Natalias sought release from prison. He also got a bundle of news articles. But what is really after was a criminal barrister's keen eye on that twenty
thirteen conviction. What I wanted was an insight into how police convicted Natalia then, and what he found was both helpful and frustrating. First though, a primer on what makes a crime.
Our criminal jurisdiction is it's prescriptive. And that is, unless there's an actual section in an act or regulation that prohibits the doing of something or mandates the doing of something, then it's not a crime. Okay, So if it's not in the for example, if it's not in the Crimes Act, it's one source of where you'll find crimes, then it's
not a crime. And this is part of the problem that you've been investigating, is that the law has a vacuum over behaviors that ordinary, reasonable, decent people would say is wrong.
And there's another point when it comes to crime and the Internet.
Some of the laws that we currently have that regulate behavior of people persons, those laws can date back to not only last century, but over a thousand years ago.
There's been efforts to contort old laws to fit new circumstances. Chris calls it shoeharning.
So there's been a lot of shoehorning going on, and the law has been slow to catch up. But the exciting area is that because as technologies changed and behavior has changed with it, the law has started to I guess you could say we're seeing green shoots popping through of new solutions to new problems.
Not back in twenty thirteen police had the same old laws to apply to a brand new problem. Here, though, are the charges Natalia faced when you're paired in court on November twenty two, twenty thirteen.
Natalia Yvette Burgess, you appear before me for sentencing on the following one charge of obtaining by deception of over one thousand dollars, another charge of obtaining by deception between five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars, and one charge of interfering with computer systems.
The first thing to know is that Natalia pleaded guilty.
Judges do have some I mean they have discretions, but they are directed to take into account sentencing principles which are contained in our Sentencing Act, and one of the factors that should be taken into account is the attitude of the offender okay and pleading guilty and at an early stage. It's a relevant matter for determining what sentence it's because generally you get a discount if you're prepared
to plead guilty at an early stage. And what that is is it's to reflect the fact that the offender has accepted liability.
Doing so, he explains, meant that the person who's committed the crime hasn't lumbered the state with the cost of a trial or created additional trauma for victims, and that happened in this case. Ultimately, when we get to it, there was a twenty percent discount. So let's get into the charges. There were two fraud charges technically called obtaining by deception and a charge of misuse of a computer system. One of the fraud charges isn't related to Natalie's catfishing.
It dated from two thousand and six when, through claiming to be pregnant, Natalia stated a refuge for young pregnant teenagers. Her only obligation was to pay living costs, which she didn't and then weeks into her stage she was asked about the money owed and for proof that she was pregnant, which she wasn't. That led to Natalia providing a doctor's letter which had such basic errors in grammar that the
refuge checked that it was authentic. It wasn't, and Natalie was asked to leave, owing one thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars. The other two charges are related to catfishing. In February twenty eleven, Natalia, using the false identity of Abbi Williams, began an online and telephone relationship with a thirteen year old At the time, she was twenty six online as Abby, she was aged between sixteen and eighteen.
As Abby. She had what the judge called telephone sex with the boy, but that's not what she's charged with. What comes next is. At one stage, she told the boy she wanted access to his Facebook page as a sign of trust. He provided the username and password, which when Natalia became abusive and upset, she used to access the account lock him out, and.
Some of the messages sent by you purporting to be the child caused him great embarrassment and resulted in the loss of friendships. The offending occurred during the time of the christ Church earthquakes, which caused considerable stress to the child.
The second Ford charge stemmed from a three year period during which Natalia infiltrated a christ Church family. In this instance, it was a sixteen year old boy she targeted, posing as Laura Jane Weston. The relationship spanned the years two thousand and eight through to twenty eleven, with the fiction supported by a cast of characters another Laura, a Kylie, and Anna and even the child.
You were even able to convince this young man that you were a three year old by changing your voice and attitude. No such child existed.
In this case. Natalia also had access to the teenager's Facebook page, but there's no sign she did anything untoward. Instead, the fraud charge was because Natalia borrowed money three hundred and seventy nine dollars to be exact, apparently to help raise her non existent daughter, and then after a disagreement, she refused to repay the outstanding two hundred and eighty nine dollars. Chris Patterson's help here is really important and insightful.
It helps us understand why Natalie was convicted then, which might explain why police showed little interests six years later, starting with misuse of a computer system. This is how Chris explains it.
You were using someone else's computer system, you had to use it not only with their authority, but also pursuance to that authority. What I mean by that is that if someone said to you, hey, you can use this computer for doing our accounts each week, it doesn't mean you can use the computer to then go in and steal all the intellectual property from the business. Or look at what people are sending each other in terms of emails.
How I've read that, and not having access to the police's evidence they put forward is I'm assuming they were taking it from the fact that a lot of these victims were providing her with because she was asking for it for their Facebook log in details, and then she was then logging on as them, and then whilst logged on, she was then doing things that they hadn't authorized her to do, like, for example, she was sending messages to their friends that were quite horrific in nature and quite
damaging to these poor young men.
So wherever the face book servers were, that was the computer system. The unauthorized access and messages that was the misuse. It makes sense, but it seems a stretch.
It's a little bit like trying to use a spanner as a screwdriver. It's just it wasn't designed for that purpose. But it's the only one that's there, so the judge used it. It wasn't an easy fit. Obtaining by deception was more straightforward because as you know, she was forming
these relationships with these described as boys. You could describe someone as young men and then under false pretenses like misrepresenting who she actually was, and then using those false pretenses to then encourage them and have them pay her some money.
And that was the key element to the charge.
Lying per se is not a criminal offense unless it triggers or causes a chain of reactions. And you know why we have this provision in our Crimes Act about obtaining by deceit. So if you lie to someone for the purpose of obtaining a benefit or causing a loss, and that benefit comes to you or the loss is suffered by the other person, that at a real basic level,
that can be a crime. But just saying to someone I'm a smoking hot, twenty four year old blonde and I like to spend time at the gym, that's not a criminal offense at all, even if it's a complete fabrication that the person saying it is actually a fifty two year old trucker from Tilmuty.
So clearly pretending to be pregnant so you can stay at a refuge for young mums is a flat lie that secures a financial benefit. With the fraud charge connected to a catfishing, it was the debts your crew through pretending to be a teenage girl for the relationship that she forged with that lie that made it criminal. With Natalia, it added up to two years and two months in prison. When twenty nineteen rolled around, Natalia had been out of
prison for three years. We learned from Sophie Jarrett that she still had access to images from before she was arrested, and we know from Crystal that Natalia harvested her images to create a new character, Kaylee. In January twenty nineteen, a week after Crystal made her complaint, it's assigned to a detective. Another week passes, and that detective knocks on
Natalia's door. In an email later to Crystal, the detective scrimes visiting Natalia, who admitted to using Crystal's photograph and offered apologies for doing so, and she also had an explanation as to why she'd used Crystal's image and messages to Lucille. She'd spoken about news, drugs and being off medication for mental health. And we can't see what explanation she offered police. That bit's blacked out, but she explained that there was some sort of trigger that led to
her using Crystal's image. It's clear from Crystal's reply that the detective told her that Natalia was seeking help. That was, in Crystal's words, a great outcome, no worries, said the detective feel free to write again, And in that email to Crystal is also this line from the detective.
There has been no specific offense identified in relation to any criminal charges to be laid.
Here is barrassed to Chris Patterson again.
We did have the Harmful Digital Communications Act come into force and that was in July twenty fifteen. That has two components to it. There's a civil component, but there's also a criminal component, and the police could have used that act, the Harmful Digital Communications Act, to bring a
prosecution against her. The Act sets out an essence that it's there to protect people from harm being course to them through their online presence, and that would have been possibly a better road, in a more appropriate road to go down. I think if the Natalie Burgers situation occurred again, that's what I'd expect the police to do.
This didn't happen. No one pointed Crystal to net Say for guidance on the civil process where she or someone she nominated could take action, and the police never seemed to raise the option of the hdca's criminal pathway. That was January twenty nineteen. By April that year, police records showed Crystal again telling police Natalia is still using her
face to trick people. Crystal wrote to the detective in no response, so she wrote again, and I think it's fair to say her email read like that of a woman who really needed someone to listen. Crystal told police a new profile had been made under yet another alias, and asked how Natalie was being monitored. To Crystal, she told police it felt like her case had been put in the two hard basket. Crystal didn't hear back from
the detective or anyone from police. As much as she had told police, there was, according to the detective, no crime being committed and nothing to be done.
That's quite quite hard as our mother as well, because you just want to go basically to narsa helland and sort the skirl owls, you know, like give her a shake and talk to people and say what's wrong with you.
It's not been easy on Crystal in the same way it wasn't easy on Sophie or on Natalie back in twenty eleven. Natalia has hurt many people by taking their images and impersonating them. But you know, it's even harder on those drawn in by Crystal's face and then subjected to Natalia's manipulations. Crystal has told me this, and she's right. We've already heard on this podcast about the men, the
boys that Natalia manipulated this way. What I didn't understand back in twenty eleven was that it wasn't just boys and men that Natali was treating like puppets. What she did back then and has still been doing now goes beyond your average catfisher. Natalia was creating characters, crafting their backstories in their lives, and then trying to write them
into other people's family histories. You've been listening to Chasing Ghosts, the Puppeteer follow the podcast and the Chasing Ghosts feed on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find more in this case that inzidherld dot co dot zed ethanselves as my producer, with audio engineering by Alistair Boys. Thanks to my colleagues for lending their voices to this episode. If you have a story about this case, contact me at David dot Fisher at inzidherld dot co
dot inz. And if you believe you've encountered behavior online that matches what we've discussed in this series, you can find help at netsafe dot org dot z. But if you feel at risk, don't hesitate contact police