FACEBOOK AS A MAIN TOOLS OF THE ‘CATFISH’ CRIME:

A CASE STUDY AMONG SINGLE MOTHERS IN KOTA KINABALU

Abstract

Cyber-crime cases involving women, especially single mothers are becoming one of the most serious social issues. Technological acceleration becomes a new mechanism in making single mothers as a major target of catfish. Catfish can be defined as an individual who uses the second identity to attract the attention of victims of cyber-love crime by giving a perfect shadow to his opponent. The objective of this study is to identify the major factors contributing to the crime of cyber-love from the perspective of the victim's experiences involving five informants through an in-depth interview. The findings show that the main medium used by catfish in trapping single mothers is through Facebook. Meanwhile, the major contributing factors to cyber-crime crimes are categorized into two main themes which are the social environment and interpersonal attraction.