Montana Is One Of The Least-Catfished States In The US
"Catfishing" became a somewhat well-known word in the 2010s after the documentary Catfish was released, depicting an online relationship that turned out to not be what the person thought it actually was. But it became sort of a sensation when the TV show based on the documentary started to air on MTV - now, "catfishing" is a widely-used term, and the show is still on the air today after eight seasons.
Catfishing is a favorite trick of scammers, to entice people with an online romance that can ultimately allow them to fool a person into giving them cash, personal information, and more. But Montanans don't seem easily fooled by it - according to a new study, Montana is one of the least-catfished states in the entire US.
Montana ranked at number 46 out of 52 in the US (counting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico). Throughout the entire state, we only had 68 romance scam cases reported - and a loss of about $936,000 between them all. That's a lot of money, but it doesn't even come close to some of the totals lost in states higher up on the list. California ranked number one in the US for catfishing scams, with over 3000 cases reported and over 120 MILLION dollars lost.
You hear it all the time, but you need to be careful about what you're doing on the internet - people can use fake profile pictures and say just the right things and it actually does work. We've only seen an increase in these kind of scams during the pandemic, too.
Looks like good news for the producers of Catfish though - it'll ensure they have plenty of subjects for years to come.