Look, we've covered a lot of these catfish stories,
and I can't tell you that the pain that I've seen it cause.
It destroys peoples lives.
It disrupts their lives.
It creates fear.
It creates pain.
Sometimes it causes people to go bankrupt.
We covered a very famous case of a man
named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who was caught tricking
Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o
into falling in love with him by posing
as a fictitious woman.
You all remember that story, right?
It was all over the media.
Take a look.
The story of the football player
and his imaginary girlfriend just got more bizarre.
It turns out the girlfriend who Manti lost
tragically to cancer never died
because she never even existed.
The woman on the other end of the phone was really a man.
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man behind the love hoax
that captived the nation speaks out
for the very first time.
I came here to own up to what I've done.
The question that everyone would want to know is why?
The truth is I hurt everyday.
I mean, this is exactly what we're talking about.
This is what she was doing using your identity with people.
They fall in love.
Some of them spend their life savings
trying to get with that person,
trying to get married, trying to do all these things,
and then when they find out it's not true
they're humiliated, heartbroken,
they grieve the loss of the relationship,
and you're innocently involved
because it's you they've fallen in love with, they think,
and you're sitting at home with your wife and kids,
and know absolutely nothing about it.
This theft of identity on the internet
is devastating to people.
This is a cruel, and viscous thing to do,
and oftentimes they prey upon those who can least afford it,
mentally, emotionally, or financially.
'Cause they're the most vulnerable.
Robin ans I have been the victim of this kind of thing,
where scams that use our names and images
have been used to con innocent people,
and oftentimes it's been elderly people
that are on fixed incomes that can ill afford to be scammed.
Take a look at this.
There are some scumbags using headlines about our marriage
being in trouble, to lure people in to buying
skin care products that have nothing to do
with Robin or her brand.
I mean, look at this.
Domestic disturbance, I never meant to hurt my wife,
but she wronged me, okay. (audience laughs)
Then, when you click on that nonsense,
it brings you to another completely fabricated headline,
so the article turns out to be nothing but an advertisement
for a skin cream trial.
We found out about this fake endorsement bull,
because a few weeks ago, viewers started writing in
to the show, saying that they had just been bamboozled
in to buying these falsely endorsed products.
Here's what some of them had to say.
When I saw an advertisement on Facebook,
I thought ooh, what is this,
so I clicked on it,
and it was saying that Robin was using this wrinkle cream.
So they said it was free,
all you had to do was pay for shipping.
It's only seven or $8, and I thought I can do that.
Couple days later, I looked at my account,
and I was charged $98.
This company has gone in, attached to my card,
started charging $101 every two weeks,
and they got me for several hundred before I realized.
It's just a scam.
You see a lot of these people are elderly people,
that get stuck for hundreds of dollars,
and you've seen the cases we've done on the show,
with elderly people who have spent
as much as $2 million,
with someone like Sarah scamming them in to thinking
that there's someone like you,
that they're now in love with,
and they spend their whole life savings,
you know, trying to make that situation happen.
And they happen all the time.