Sweet Bobby

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Just watched this. Fascinating documentary about about a woman being catfished for years. What got be was the perpetrator was an ordinary person, not a scammer or IT specialist, but an ordinary twenty-something person, and that she manage to dupe the main person for so long and so successfully.

I watched it last night. I must admit I find it shocking that she went along with it for so many years without ever having seen him or heard his voice. I mean being shot and put into witness protection then having a stroke all seems like a made up story........I am honestly not victim blaming but come on 9 years!!

That aside fair play to her for getting exposure for a horrible thing to have done to her, I cannot believe the person wasn't charged. She must have felt so humiliated and angry having wasted so much time on somebody who never existed. I wonder what the family did to the cousin?

A fascinating case. On the victim, it shows how low self esteem and desperation can really leave you with your blinkers on. 9 years without ever seeing him? Plus the previous relationship she was in told us a lot about her lack of self respect and self esteem. She needs therapy.

On the perpetrator, well i’m fascinated by her. What is the psychology behind someone carrying this out at this level?? She started when she was a teenager, it was so elaborate and why do it to her own cousin who she apparently had a good relationship with. How did she make the time?? Very sad individual who should have been punished. She needs extensive therapy.

That's what most cat fishers tend to be

Bored/unhappy people, what makes you think an IT specialist 😂

What made it different was there was no financial gain for the catfisher, it was all about the emotional and long-term relationship with the victim, which is even weirder given their actual lives.

The victim was very gullible but I think that's why it didn't ring as many alarm bells with her, she'd seen the man, she had her cousin's reports and 'he' did speak on the phone, just in a whisper.

Poor her, she'd been strung along by one man for 18 years most likely and then another person for 9 years.

Watched yesterday too, I can only imagine the cousin was very jealous of who she deemed a very successful person.

She had also previously been strung along by her ex boyfriend for 18 years waiting on marriage/proposal, she had form for naive decisions with “men” unfortunately.

Yes, I wondered whether the shooting, witness protection, stroke, pregnancy etc (all quite extreme) was the cousin trying to shut the situation down, but she still went along with it.

Also, the real Bobby was known to them via the cousins ex. I’m surprised it never got back to them that he was alive and well in Brighton, especially in that small community.

And why did the cousin do it? The blurb at the end alluded to an event that happened but nothing more was said.

well done on making the program and bringing it to light.

I'm watching this now. It's fascinating, shocking and gripping all at once. I listened to the podcast (which goes into more detail) a few years ago.

It's pretty astonishing that she was taken in by it for so long, she seems intelligent and articulate. But I've read on other threads that it's easier to understand in the context of Sikh culture, which I'm not familiar with. Apparently it's common for people to have a distant courtship for a prolonged period until they can engineer their families formally introducing them to one another. A girl I went to school with got together with her husband like this. They actually met at work but there was then a long rigmarole of finding out which friends their families had in common etc. I went to her wedding and the celebrant at one point referred to it as an arranged marriage and I saw her and her husband doing a cheeky smile at each other.

The cousin behind it seems so odd. She had nothing to gain from it and it must have taken up a huge part of her own life to construct and maintain such an elaborate fiction. I wonder what the wider family makes of it. Bobby's family seems to have had higher social ranking so her parents probably felt less able to make enquiries and contact.

The cousin had a good job (in banking?) which she left before the podcast broadcast had finished. There was also a civil court case so Kirat did get some sort of compensation. It's a shame she didn't instruct the private investigator much sooner.

I also wondered whether the cousin has now been shunned as a result if her actions. She must have heard her family talking about Bobby - was she thrilled hue convincing it all was, or thought she’d gone too far and wondered how she could end it?

Just watched this. Wow.
Feel in turn both sorry for this lady but also frustrated.
I know a lot has been made about the Sikh community and how they date differently, as well as the pressure to get married but I find it strange that no alarm bells rang a LOT sooner.
Sad for her because at 44, she has most likely lost the chance to become a mum which is what she has always wanted and she has had years of her life wasted. That cousin of hers is clearly a very unwell and vindictive individual.

I watched this last week, felt like there were so many unanswered questions I had (like did the cousin have a job? How could she have devoted so much time to this? How come the real Bobby didn’t also show up in her Facebook feed etc etc) and listened to the podcast which didn’t really answer any more of my questions.
My overall feeling is that the cousin is a piece of shit and the victim was totally gullible in going along with this for the best part of a decade. Who would put up with that kind of shit?

That's a good point actually about the FB friends. Why did he (and even his wife's ) real profiles not show up?
In the Sikh community and a close knit one at that, the cousin would surely be ostracised from the family so I also wonder what happened to her as she surely couldn't go on living where she was or working where she did

I saw this a couple of days ago, and honestly I think Kirat is a complete and utter idiot.

Simran should absolutely be ashamed of herself for putting people through what she did, but Kirat is a grown woman who should have stopped that nonsense much earlier. She's nobody to blame but herself for letting it go on for that long, it's ridiculous.

I watched this today. While I was amazed at how long the catfish went on for, good on Kirat for investigating to get to the bottom of it. Such a strange story.

Just watched this. Such a bizarre story! I think Kirat was just so down following the break up of her long term relationship which seemed quite emotionally abusive itself, that she jumped at the chance to have that fairytale relationship that she saw others having. Unfortunately she was blinded to the obvious reality and probably didn’t want to believe it. I also find it strange how the cousin had so much time to devote to it and also how Kirat’s friends and family didn’t tell her how ridiculous the whole thing was. Very sad.

I've listened to the original podcast by Tortoise Media (it's also on BBC Sounds right now), and it gives a lot more detail than the Netflix show does.

I think part of what drew Kirat in was that in the beginning, there was no full-on "involvement" with Fake Bobby - he was just someone she'd met online via this sad situation with his younger brother (which was also fake, but her cousin was reinforcing that story right from the start). So it was low stakes, and she had a whole life (with boyfriend) outside the Bobby thing. Him being online would not have felt that weird, and he even divorced, and then remarried (and invited her to the wedding, which she couldn't make!) - it was not as though she was reeled into a romance from the start, which might of raised red flags earlier on.

I keep thinking about the night she saw him at the club in Brighton. She'd have been saved so much heartbreak if she'd just pushed through her social embarrassment at him not seeming to react to her and discovered that he genuinely didn't know what she was talking about.

Her cousin though - wow, what a psycho. I hope they keep small animals and children away from her!

I really don’t think they explained what had happened at the end very well (on the Netflix show). If the podcast is more detailed I’m going to listen to that. Very strange story and I did feel so sorry for Kirat, but 9 years? I can understand (sort of) the continuing conversations when he was just a friend but the actual relationship, when he was making her stay on the phone all the time? How did she function in real life at all?

Again, I think the killer aspect WAS the long timeframe. They were online acquaintances, then friends, for YEARS before the relationship stakes were raised. And throughout that time frame, they had many "mutual" online friends reinforcing everything (also created and maintained by the psycho cousin), but all so low stakes it never raised alarm bells. When things did ramp up I think that Kirat had unwittingly "invested" so much accumulated friendship she was unwilling to drop her "friend" even if his story and behaviour was getting increasingly odd.

Honestly, I have been a bit surprised at how comparatively little interest there's been in the cousin. She was at school (and Head Girl!) when it started, she maintained it through uni, she kept it going in her early career and actually must have ramped it up as she was promoted to a Vice President position at a bank - it was a lot of effort, and for what? The podcast has some interesting suggestions that she never "got" why she might be being cruel to her cousin, but as she won't speak out we still have no idea what she was getting out of that massive catfishing set up.

Yes I agree the long timeframe made it more plausible in some ways. I wonder how the cousin had time though. To be managing all these multiple personas.

I agree, that's the real story - wtf makes someone want to do that to someone they know and apparently get one with, for years? It's just crazy.

Just watched this and my biggest question is, if he was in witness protection and ICU having suffered a stroke, didn’t she question how he was able to conceive a baby with his ex? Surely that would have raised enough questions/doubt to end the relationship? I don’t understand why she carried on with it all after that. So strange.

I finished listening to the podcasts too.

I still think Kirat was a complete and utter idiot. Honestly.

I have listened to the podcasts too. What really struck me was the cousin claiming Kirat groomed her and was enjoying the fantasy, that turning nasty on Kirat was her trying to get Kirat to end things. It is scary when you think of the abuse Kirat put up with for someone she had never met. But then I suppose she’s not alone in putting up with abuse. She was in love and wanted to help him, put herself last. It doesn’t make her an idiot or whatever, but a really empathetic, genuinely lovely person who was vulnerable because of their nature and taken advantage of.

I do feel sorry for her but if you listen to her on different interviews she says different things about the same events. So I don’t think we are getting the whole story. The other this is she says is that it could happen to anyone which can be true but I’m not sure it’s true for the length of time that it went in for her. There were so many red flags and she mentioned in the doc that she thought about running the wife of real Bobby over which to me is very concerning.

Haha - Coolmum, have you ever been seen in the same room as Kirat's cousin? 🤣