A woman forced to pay a five-figure sum after subjecting a teenager to a four-year ‘catfishing’ campaign has been pictured for the first time.
Elha-Mai Weston targeted Sasha Davies, both 19, using her social media pictures and AI-generated content to create a string of fake online profiles.
Weston, who lives streets away from the victim in Glamorgan, Wales, deceived men across the sites Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and Tinder using Ms Davies’s photos.
The catfish started to create profiles under the name ‘Sophie’ and ‘Sophie Kildare’ when both women were 16, which accumulated more than 100,000 followers.
The accounts stayed active for four years. Despite living in the close-knit community, Ms Davies had never heard of Weston and calls her a ‘complete stranger’.
The student became aware that her identity had been stolen after she spotted a TikTok account with her images in 2022.
The issue snowballed despite Ms Davies reporting it to South Wales police, turning her profiles private and reporting the accounts to the social media sites. However, her images continued to proliferate social media, linked to the name Sophie.
It reached such heights men would approach the teenager while she worked behind the counter at McDonald’s or as she walked down the street. They were adamant that they had a romantic relationship with her.
Sasha Davies (pictured), 19, was tormented for four years under a ‘catfish’ campaign led by Elha-Mai Weston
Weston (pictured) targeted Ms Davies, using her social media pictures and AI-generated content to create a string of fake online profiles
‘Boys were coming up to me and I had to sit there and prove to them it wasn’t me. Everyone in my hometown believed I was behind the account,’ Ms Davies told the Daily Mail.
‘I wasn’t the only one affected by it. My family, my friends and my relationship were all affected. Everything was affected by this account.
‘My boyfriend Charlie even had boys messaging him saying “you know your girlfriend’s texting me”.’
However, Ms Davies marks one incident at an event in Swansea in September 2025 as her ‘scariest’, as a group of boys ‘lingered’ around her and her friends.
‘I thought it was really strange. Then one of them tapped me on the shoulder and called me Sophie,’ Ms Davies recalled.
‘I turned away and said my name’s not Sophie. He disagreed and said he had been speaking with me for months. He showed me messages going on for ages.’
The boy, Ms Davies said, then showed photos of Ms Davies and her friends at the event that had been posted on the fake account that evening.
‘My friends posted a picture of us that night on her social media and Weston had taken it, posting it on the fake account,’ she said. ‘People would have known I was at the event because she stole it and posted it.’
Weston created profiles using Ms Davies’s photos (pictured) under the name ‘Sophie’ and ‘Sophie Kildare’ when both women were 16
The boy confronted Weston, saying he had met the real person behind the images, and was immediately blocked.
It was a cycle that continued to torment Ms Davies, as whenever a friend posted a picture of the teenager, it would pop up within ‘minutes’ on the fake accounts.
‘I couldn’t tell my friends to make their accounts private for the sake of me,’ she added. ‘It is up to them what they want to do.’
Fake personas of Ms Davies circulated for four years as she and her family ‘battled’ with police to be heard, who claimed there was insufficient evidence to launch an investigation or approach Weston.
Ms Davies said the family contacted the police ‘countless’ times since the first fake account was created in 2022, however ‘nothing happened’.
During that time, the teenager said she felt ostracised from her community as she struggled to convince people the profiles were not hers.
‘Everybody thought it was me,’ Ms Davies said. ‘Nobody trusted it wasn’t me. My mental health was bad. I remember crying to my mother and saying, “I just can’t go through this”.
‘I felt like there was no help or support at all.’
Some of the accounts accumulated more than 100,000 followers and stayed active for four years. They used photos of Ms Davies, including within the profile of the accounts (pictured)
Feeling silenced by police, the teenager took matters into her own hands and gathered evidence in an attempt to find her catfish.
She was able to use a SoundCloud profile, named Sophie Kildare, to lead her to numerous fake accounts with her images on them. The profiles were linked under the name Elha-Mai Weston.
‘I had never heard of her before,’ Ms Davies said. ‘I searched her on Facebook and Instagram but couldn’t find her account. My boyfriend had a look and was able to find her, so she had obviously blocked me.’
Her discovery left her shocked. ‘When it first started happening, I thought it was a complete stranger far away,’ Ms Davies said.
‘I thought it was someone from around the world, I never would have thought it was someone who lives five minutes down the road.’
She then contacted Cohen Davis Solicitors with her own bundle of evidence, which included an abundance of screenshots.
Her lawyers, under Yair Cohen, tracked down Weston using open-source intelligence, connecting the fake persona’s network of accounts to her real identity.
Once the identity thief was found, High Court proceedings were launched. The court was told Weston engaged in a ‘sustained campaign of online impersonation’, known as catfishing.
Ms Davies won a £10,000 compensation payout this week at a High Court in London. She is pictured alongside her solicitor Yair Cohen
The case concluded this week with Ms Davies’s agreement to settle on a £10,000 payout, after Weston admitted to the campaign of online impersonation through lawyers and subsequently apologised before a judge.
Ms Davies said she was ‘shocked’ by the result, adding: ‘I never thought I would be able to find out who was behind this. I never thought I would be in this position after being told for years that nothing could be done.’
Weston referenced mental health issues for the reason behind why she chose to steal Ms Davies’s identity.
‘I just want to have a conversation with her. I’m not even angry,’ Ms Davies said.
‘I was angry when the accounts were made but that was because I felt I couldn’t do anything. I want to know why she chose me. There are so many pretty girls in my area, why did she do it to me?’
The teenage student believes Weston’s potential jealousy led her to launch the catfish campaign, but says it has left her feeling concerned.
‘I do feel threatened by her, you never know what someone is capable of. She could be capable of doing anything now,’ Ms Davies said.
‘She lives five minutes away from me. She could be following me or watching me.’
Ms Davies is now pursuing criminal proceedings while police have launched an ‘on-going’ investigation.
Questioned on what she hopes to achieve, the teenager said: ‘I believe she should be in prison for the amount of time that the accounts were going on for.
‘It affected me massively and she didn’t care. And I honestly and genuinely think that if she never got caught out, this would have been going on forever.’
Ms Davies’s solicitor Yair Cohen told the Daily Mail: ‘Sasha and I came across each other almost by chance, and the moment she told me what she had been living through, I knew I could not walk away.
‘For four years she had been impersonated online, and hardly anyone believed her, not always her friends, and not even the police, who kept telling her nothing could be done.
‘She had been left completely alone with it, and what has stayed with me is how grateful she was that someone was finally willing to take her seriously. It made me angry.
‘We are quick to pass law after law about what people may say online, yet slow to protect a young woman whose entire identity was stolen and who was abused for years while the police stood powerless.
‘It makes me wonder who these laws are really for, and what “online safety” has quietly come to mean.’
A spokesperson for South Wales police said: ‘We recognise this type of identity theft can have a very serious impact on its victims.
‘Wherever there is evidence of criminality we will always seek to take robust action and prosecute perpetrators.
‘We can confirm South Wales Police is investigating a case of identity theft in the Mountain Ash area and the victim is being kept up to date during the investigation.’
Weston refused to comment when approached by the Mail.
