When Justin [not his real name] began chatting with Leah Plamer, a fashion blogger he met on Instagram, he was completely bowled over.
She was beautiful, she was glamorous, and she had thousands of social media followers, all of whom were addicted to the photos she shared of her jet-setting lifestyle.
He gradually grew closer to her, tweeting, texting, and phoning her several times a day - and even wound up leaving his girlfriend for his Instagram crush.
But, despite all the time they communicated, Justin never video chatted or met Leah in person.
Things gradually began to fizzle out between the pair of them - and, earlier this year, Justin was contacted by a woman named Ruth, who insisted that he phone her immediately.
As it turned out, Ruth Palmer (whose married name is Graves) had had over 900 photos stolen from her Instagram account between 2012 and 2015.
These were used to create Leah Palmer accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tinder.
When she realised the extent to which the impostor had gone to in stealing her life, Ruth - who lives in Dubai with her husband - decided to take action, and began contacting victims of ‘Leah’ directly.
Starting with Justin.
"I Skyped him and it was awful," Ruth told BuzzFeed.
"This poor guy saw that I was with my husband and it's just a weird situation to be in. He very quickly had to come off the Skype call and said, 'This is a bit weird for me'."
Ruth then asked Instagram to shut down the fake account but, just a few weeks later, another one was set up.
She even tried phoning the account via the number given out, but, whenever she tried to speak to the woman who answered, they would hang up again.
Ruth contacted Action Fraud, who deal with internet crime in the UK, and the police, but they have said that that no criminal activity has been committed.
Merryn Hockaday, of Action Fraud, said: “Ruth Palmer's case has been 'no crimed' by the Crime Registrar and the report will now be classed as an information report.
“Information reports are not investigated by the police, but they are kept on record and used for intelligence purposes.
“This means the case will be kept on record to help inform intelligence.”
Speaking with the Mail Online, Ruth said: “I just want people to be aware of what can happen online. You never know what's going on - and what a profound affect something like this can have on your life.
“It's crazy. I genuinely don't feel like it has actually happened but sadly it really has and the situation keeps unravelling where more and more people have been duped by this impostor for either online friendships or online relationships.
“It's scary the length to which the impostor has gone.”
REMEMBER: You can report impostor accounts to both Instagram and Twitter, who will investigate and delete the profile.****