Chasing Ghosts

For the first time in 13 years, David Fisher sits down with Natalia Burgess to talk about her catfishing. While he gains new insight into her life, how she operates her false characters, and her reasons for doing it, something's missing. And then an email out of the blue offers the answers he's been waiting for. 

And one victim of Natalia's catfishing reveals the devastating consequences of having these memories resurface. 

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If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

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Warning: This episode contains discussion around suicide.

In 2011, after outing her for her catfishing, David Fisher sat down with Natalia Burgess for an interview about why she had done what she had.

13 years later, David revisits that interview as he looks for answers as to why she has done what she has, and gets insight from a psychologist on the potential motivations behind her behaviour. 

Suicide and depression help services:

If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

For counselling and support:

While Natalia is best known for catfishing teen boys and young men into relationships, she has also used the photos she has stolen to trick at least two different teenage girls - and their mothers - into believing she is a long-lost member of their family. Today, David finds out their stories and how Natalia came to infiltrate their lives. 

In 2022, David Fisher receives an email from Crystal Jenner, a New Zealand woman living in Australia. She has approached him as her last hope after six years of trying to find a solution to Natalia stealing her photos.

David hears from her, her mother, and a friend who also had had her pictures stolen, one of the men who fell victim to Crystal's face, and a lawyer analyses why Crystal has struggled to get the law to help her. 

In December 2010, the announcement on Facebook that Laura Jane West has died in a car crash devastates her online friends, and has ramifications in real life for those linked to her and her sisters. 

Four months later, Herald on Sunday journalist David Fisher investigates a serial catfisher targeting teen boys in Christchurch.

In his reporting, David would link these two stories together as he uncovered the extent to which the catfisher had created the world around her characters - a world that, 13 years later, he is still trying to make sense of. 

Suicide and depression help services:

If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

For counselling and support: