Catching a notorious stalker tormenting women online | 60 Minutes Australia

this is the story of a crime so malicious it's difficult to understand how anyone could even think of it it begins innocently enough with a flight attendant Jess meeting the Australian actor Lincoln Lewis on a plane it was 14 years ago but unknown to both of them at the time this harmless encounter would set off a catastrophic chain of events somehow someone with a particularly warped mind got wind of the meeting and then using social media assumed Lincoln Lewis's identity for the next decade Jess and other helpless victims were stalked and harassed by what police now describe as Australia's worst ever case of catfishing [Music] a holiday video from a happier time Jess's life used to be joyous and carefree for the single mom and Jet setting flight attendant every day was an adventure that was you know fabulous couldn't beat it didn't feel like a job it was a lifestyle mixing with celebrities posting photos all that was part of the job description it was just a way of life it was really exciting foreign but not anymore the job she loved flying the world and mixing with the Rich and Famous ended up Landing her In Harm's Way tonight she wants to share a story so extraordinary many weren't Believers how an evil Predator deceived this smart and outgoing young woman and lured her into a world of outrageous lies and they'll always think okay until you're in it you won't understand how difficult it is to get out of it in this decade-long drama Jess's only fault was to follow her heart it started so innocently another ordinary day at work when the Australian actor Lincoln Lewis boarded Jess's plane so tell me about meeting Lincoln Lewis what happened he was squashed in a middle seat and I was like we can't have that not the son of you know the great king and um just from from the get-go I was very confident back then and always jokey and a bit flirty um but in a jokey way and um we just hit it off and got talking that they hit it off is obvious from the happy snap Jess and Lincoln talk but neither knew it would set in motion a terrible series of events so this is the photo hmm started it all you think yeah as anyone would Jess posted the photo on social media she also found her new friend on Facebook and they happily messaged each other but unknowingly Jess had made an enormous mistake she'd actually connected with a fake Lincoln Lewis account in what way did that photo set off this Avalanche we were joking about the pick and oh do you remember that day um you know when we first met on the aircraft so you're being pumped for information and you didn't even know it this person had a very cunning way of extracting information foreign for the next few years they were great online Maids 13. Lincoln suddenly wanted to be more than just friends Jess was pleasantly surprised by the celebrities attention I still remember the actual day that it all changed I recall him saying can I call you and I was like oh my God okay he wants to call me and I thought wow okay why not um so I gave him my number [Music] how were you convinced to become involved in this relationship my daughter was young and my focus was on her and my my flying which I loved so um you know when a nice young man starts paying you compliments and um knows seems to know a lot about you it it's very flattering theirs was a long distance relationship conducted entirely online their busy schedules never managing to coincide telephone calls and text messages were the way they communicated but despite never meeting the romance heated up it's not my beautiful boy it may be hard to believe now Jess could be tricked but the catfish posing as Lincoln Lewis was always one step ahead what about the fact that this was all online like that you had not yet met yes so he had excuses for everything that started to have a few little doubts um the fact that he wouldn't meet me and and stuff I'd started to have niggling doubts but I thought why would anyone contact me and you know want to lie to me got to the point where I was starting to get really frustrated and I said come on now we've you know this has gone on long enough stop messing me about by this stage Jess was smitten which made it easier for her to accept the excuses of her supposed boyfriend and besides he was always sending photos showing what he said he was doing I would be talking to him and I'd be saying what are you doing he's like I'm having lunch with my sister and then he'd send a photo of him with his sister having lunch again red flag trawling through the photos now makes Jess want to kick herself but back then it was so different my daughter was saying that she wanted a Buffalo Bill ice cream literally 10 minutes later this photo comes in and he goes look what I've got and I was like I've been having doubts and then I see this coming and I'm like well how could you not believe it I think gosh those doubts weren't true but as time went on and there was still no meeting Jess sought reassurance she wasn't being played did you ask for any proof that you were talking to Lincoln Lewis I'd said to him send me something to prove who you are and then next minute I get a driver's license sent to me Lincoln Lewis's driver's license with his address Jess was still in doubt so the catfisher came up with a new extraordinary tactic this time suggesting a face-to-face Skype call so you spoke to him in person yes I did the phone rang and sure enough here is Lincoln Lewis talking to me and I just remember seeing him talking I would say something and there'd be a bit of a delay and then a few minutes later you would see him like kind of laughing and throwing his head back and and it didn't I was giddy I was excited I was like my God this is actually you know this is actually him talking to me how did you how could that happen how could you have a conversation with him in person over Skype there is software that people can use to do this and this person was just so good at what they did um so prepared um had obviously chosen Lincoln because there's plenty of you know stuff on the internet plenty of video footage somehow they'd use video footage and some sort of software that can imitate the mouth to speak as they speak the blurry video made the Betrayal complete but keeping up the elaborate hoax was a full-time job as devious as the catfisher was it was inevitable there'd be a slip up it happened when the real Lincoln turned up in Queensland this friend contacted me and said hey Lincoln's on my flight I said pardon said no I'm just talking to him he's in Sydney she goes no I just flew him into Brisbane he's here for the origin finally the catfisher was caught out but when Jess made contact the fiction continued it's like okay you got me I didn't want to tell you he said because you know I've got all this media lined up so I didn't want to get your hopes up wow that was fast very fast there was no hesitation I've never known someone who can lie um so brilliantly did you believe him the time that they were in the air where he wouldn't have been able to have contacted me what's the time that I'd been talking to him all morning and I then confronted him and I said um you need to tell me who you are Jess had been strung along for months but now faced with an obvious untruth she found a way to get an Urgent Message to the real Lincoln Lewis he knew nothing about it he was a victim too it was horrifying and heartbreaking news he said Jess I'm sorry um I'm sorry that this is happening to you but it's not me he said it's never been me just now knew everything she'd been told was a lie unwittingly she'd trusted and confided in a twisted and cruel stranger it's not a person it's a it's a disgusting um sub-human creature it no one that's human could do that to another person could could be so vindictive and so evil and um sorry um it was it's disgusting so you now call this person it it but the most shocking Revelation was still to come when police got involved in the case okay we're going to get you to close your eyes and listen and tell us if that's this is the person that you've been speaking to so I said okay closed my eyes they press play as soon as I heard the voice I got goosebumps and said that's it that's that's him and they said okay now open your eyes and I opened and I felt sick it's a no-brainer for Jess if she could have the last 10 years of her life over she'd gladly do it single mom and flight attendant thought she was happily involved in an online romance with the actor Lincoln Lewis but in reality she'd been deceived by a total stranger when Jess discovered the truth and tried to end the fake relationship things only got worse much worse I changed my number and I was like it's over and I breathed such a sigh of relief I thought that said I'm done I don't have to ever talk to this creep ever again so within 10 minutes of me changing my number this person had tried calling and realized that I disconnected my phone and was straight into Optus trying to get my new number somehow the catfish has succeeded and armed with Jess's new telephone number started stalking her it was a terrifying time Jess moved house twice and changed her daughter's school but the calls and threads kept coming day and night here everything Jess did to try to end the torment seemed to fail the anger in the catfish's voice was as real as Jess's panic and suffering I remember one night I was in a fetal position on my bed I'd had 50 60 messages in a row with Frets about my daughter um and I just couldn't cope anymore I broke down and I remember my little girl standing at the doorway of my room and um she was only six hungry and she was saying mommy I'm hungry and I was just rocking on my bed and I couldn't my phone just kept ringing and I just had the pillow over my head was like just make it stops at the point of breaking Jess went to police and offered to collect evidence for them secretly recording more of her calls with the catfisher calling fake Lincoln 542. oh hey then in a very brave move to catch the catfisher she spun her own lie to the person who'd been so cruelly pursuing her Jess said her phone was broken and she didn't have the money to fix it the roost worked and soon enough the offer came to put money in her bank account to pay for repairs the receipt and CCTV footage from the bank were what the police needed to track down the stalker but then Jess had the biggest shock of all when she met with Detectives and I said okay we're going to get you to close your eyes and listen and tell us if that's this is the person that you've been speaking to so I said okay closed my eyes they press play as soon as I heard the voice I got goosebumps and said that's it that's that's him and they said okay now open your eyes and I opened and I said okay um where is he rewind it and they said no no that's it I said no that's a female that's that's not him can you tell me if on that yeah it's Lydia abdomenic and head of space surname uh a b d e l m a l e k the person masquerading as Lincoln Lewis the person who convinced Jess she was in a relationship with a man was in fact a woman and how are they then I'm 26 26 okay what's your current address unmasking Lydia Abdul Malik was a shock to everyone for so long the person that I spoke with in my mind one thousand percent was a man it was a male I'm a quaseline detective I've come down the Victorian as a result of an investigation I'm completing in relation to protracted stalkings okay do you understand that yep yeah it's hard to convey how I felt at the time I was um yeah I wanted to vomit to have that thing staring back at me with this voice it just made me feel sick to my stomach it was horrendous not only horrendous but bizarre Lydia Abdul Malik who's a 26 year old who still lived at home with her parents she was a respected member of Melbourne's Saint Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church studied Psychology was good with I.T and saw herself as an aspiring actor earlier this morning we executed a search warrant at your family's residence as a result of that search warrant he took a number of a number of computer items so that's mobile fines laptops USBS was there one particular thing that really struck you about this case just a sheer amount of phone numbers email addresses fake personas those sorts of things lawyer and private investigator Tam McLaughlin specializes in fraud and deception investigations even he is Amazed by Abdul Malik's deception okay when you get with the wrong crowd we're like it's all these like popular celebrities and you just believe everybody on Facebook and stuff that's when you get in with the wrong kind of people and you get sucked into stuff so that's probably what's happening here but like I said I none of our family know them I think she really lets her guard down because she actually gives a very good description of the offending she talks about people being sucked into the world of celebrities so she's essentially just described what she did to the victims without any prompting from the detective it's just sort of claiming to be a victim you know be in touch with fake of Lincoln Lewis herself I mean sort of fairy tale stuff she has she's already concocted the story and she has already created these backstops and protects even it's her own internal justification for why she's doing these things why would you still be the one in the first place but that's Tam says what's striking about abdom Alex police interview is that despite the mountain of evidence against her she still tries to dupe the detectives could you look at it from from our point of view everything just seems to be coming back and linking coming back to yourself yeah and that's fair enough like you can only deal with what you have in front of you but when you look at it like this it's extraordinary that she kind of got away with it for so long five years that's an enormous amount of time when the first reports were actually made to police in 2011. so she probably is operating under the assumption that she's going to get away with this Jess's case was only the beginning of the police investigation detectives found other victims of Lydia abdomalik including another flight attendant one of Jess's work colleagues who will call Emma like Jess she received hundreds of phone calls as well as disgusting threats of violence and intimidation for Emma it was so sustained and for so long that um I just unless you're in that situation it's very hard to understand and the psychological damage that it does and um this person it wasn't catfishing it was psychological abuse it was sexual abuse in June 2017 Abdul Malik was charged with multiple crimes but as Jess and Emma waited for their day in court the unthinkable happened one of the managers at work called me and said um some bad news for you um and they said Emma's passed away I said one they said she took her life and I just hung up and I just broke down I remembered that she had sent me a message a few nights earlier I never got back to her and um but she had reached out to me telling me that she wasn't coping and um I was too wrapped up in my own pain that I couldn't um I couldn't help her and then by the time I read her message it was too late Emma's death was a devastating loss to everyone who knew and loved her but it strengthened Jess's resolve to ensure Justice was served after a drawn-out trial Lydia Abdul Malik was found guilty of six counts of stalking and sentenced to two years and eight months in jail we were elated we were so happy we were you know in tears crying you know we'd finally stopped it because these people won't stop what they're doing they have to be stopped so that's what we did but as if there hadn't been enough suffering already an hour after being found guilty Lydia Abdul Malik lodged an appeal and was freed on bail Lydia on what grounds are you appealing your jails that level of Cruelty is hard to imagine isn't it [Music] how was that Lincoln Lewis's same mobile phone recording how am I supposed to again how am I supposed to know that this is Australia's worst catfisher how do you explain that that's occur and that's what I'm telling you that I can't explain that to you her name is Lydia Abdul Malik and she subjected victims like flight attendant Jess to years of unimaginable hell to what about 146 calls again I can't explain that to you either but the million dollar question is why this has taken hours and hours and hours and hours of her this is you know become essentially a second job almost you know so it is extremely extensive you know that the level of I guess kind of complexity of this is you know something that we that we don't often see British clinical psychologist Dr Alan Underwood Works closely with Scotland Yard on stalking cases he's convinced Abdul Malik is clearly a deeply troubled woman this kind of behavior is a way perhaps of striking back at the sort of perceived unfairness and that that perhaps sense of maybe entitlement that she should have these kind of things and she's unable to or unable to articulate those or control those in her lives when you think about stalking as misguided as it is you sometimes think it's driven by love not resentment or hate but it doesn't sound like love was involved in this it doesn't appear to be um from the the notes and the information that we've seen the ultimate goal then is to hurt it's actually to to wound and and punish her targets her victims is that sense of being able to I guess kind of assert autonomy to have control and that may be the initial motivation and then the sustaining motivation is where you are intruding onto that person's life so you're able to have that power and control uh you're able to have that impact and to humiliate why would I make those phone calls that's a very very good question exactly if abdom Alex aim was to control and then humiliate her victims tragically she achieved it with jizz so your sense of self your sense of security everything had been robbed from you yeah I am I would be walking through a terminal and I would receive a message on my phone saying I can see you walking through the terminal um you know say cheese you guys are telling me can you explain how that happened how can someone do that what about the level of Cruelty the level of sort of harm and the sort of the impact of that you know of tricking people into thinking they're in a relationship then threatening them then pretending they're another person and developing that relationship to then have that pulled away those kind of you know behaviors have a real Insidious kind of impact together with the Australian federal police Tam McLaughlin agrees but adds the difficulty in policing these crimes means offenders often believe they won't ever be caught do you think that the laws within Australia are strong enough for this particular type of stalking in this case as we saw the main difficulty is identifying who the actual perpetrator is and that took years and years of diligent detective work to prove in this case how would you describe the attitudes of investigators police in regards to this crime do they know enough about it is there enough knowledge we all know what a blood spatter pattern looks like or we all know what fingerprints on a stolen vehicle look like but do we all know what the list of IP addresses that might match to a particular iPad or the what the IMEI so the hardware number that attaches to a phone is and so it's about having the education within the investigators of those particular technical aspects you are have to undertake the investigation in such a meticulous way as to make sure that you close all of the gates for someone to say no that wasn't me that was someone else appealed her original conviction for stalking but late last year Victorian County court judge Claire Quinn rejected it and increased her sentence to four years in prison those who are prepared to engage in this kind of behavior and allow it to progress to the extreme extent that it can armed with the knowledge of the devastating effect it is having on the other individual need to know that they will be punished severely [Music] the judge's comments couldn't have been more welcome for Jess her only regret was that her friend and fellow victim Emma wasn't with her to hear it you've had so much taken away from you but you have persisted and you have pursued and this predator and offender is paying the consequences do you come away feeling strong feeling like you've achieved something on the day that it was taken to jail I felt very strong I felt very brave um and I felt proud because this is something that Emma and I had spoken about we want to see this person punished for what they did and what they've taken from us it's a very cruel hoax yeah it is I was heartbroken even to this day I don't trust myself now even though I know it's not my fault I still can't help feeling to blame for it happening so I don't trust myself it's been a decade of misery punctuated by countless moments of genuine Terror her ordeal might be over now but that will never lessen the fury she feels the Lydia Abdul Malik especially knowing this wicked catfisher has never shown any remorse for her crimes her family still thinks that she's innocent you know her community I want them to know what kind of person they're dealing with this person has pulled the wall over their eyes for so long they need to know what it's capable of and it's capable of Taking Lives ruining lives and I want people to know that when it comes out of prison I want people to know what type of person this is if this story has raised issues and you need to speak with someone call lifeline on 13 11 14. hello I'm Tara Brown thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia subscribe to our Channel now for brand new stories and exclusive Clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minutes segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on nine now.com dot a u and the nine Now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

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Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Tom Steinfort, 60Mins, Amelia Adams, news, world news, news australia, investigative journalism, 60 minutes australia youtube, 60 minutes youtube, 60 minutes episodes, 60 minutes australia episodes, 60 minutes australia, 60 minutes, catfish, catfishing, cat fish, cat fishing, catfisher, cat fisher, stalking, harrassment, sexual abuse, online staking, online dating, dating, romance, lincoln lewis, relationships, love

Id: O8peZofNul4

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023