Published June 2026
Fraud charge withdrawn after a dating-app selfie was traced to identity theft and weaknesses were found in the prosecution’s financial evidence
A selfie shared on a dating app became the unlikely centrepiece of a fraud prosecution after it was used by someone else to open a bank account in our client’s name.
Like many people using dating apps, our client exchanged messages and personal photographs with people he met online. There was nothing unusual about sending a selfie to someone he believed he was getting to know. He had no reason to suspect that the photograph would later be used to steal his identity and implicate him in an alleged fraud.
Several months later, police charged him with fraud. The prosecution alleged that an invoice issued by a South Australian company had been altered and that money had then been deposited into a bank account held in our client’s name. On the surface, the existence of an account in his name appeared to provide an obvious link between him and the alleged offending. But that theory quickly began to unravel.
Our client had never heard of the company. He had no knowledge of the bank account. He had never accessed it, controlled it or dealt with the funds that passed through it. After the money was deposited, the person operating the account transferred the funds into cryptocurrency, leaving police with little indication of where the money had ultimately gone.
A close review of the disclosure revealed what investigators had apparently overlooked. Our client had been catfished and was himself the victim of identity theft.
A selfie he had supplied to a potential suitor had been used to satisfy the identity-verification process required to establish an online bank account. The fraudster was then able to create an account in our client’s name and use it to receive the proceeds of the alleged fraud. That changed the significance of the banking evidence entirely.
The fact that the account bore our client’s name did not prove that he had opened it, accessed it or controlled it. In reality, the evidence pointed to someone else using his identity to create and operate the account. Far from being the person behind the alleged fraud, our client appeared to have unknowingly provided an identity thief with one of the pieces of information needed to impersonate him.
As the trial approached, we conducted a detailed review of the prosecution brief, including the bank records and other financial material the State intended to rely upon. That review revealed a second major problem. Important parts of the banking and financial material were not in a form that could simply be relied upon at trial. Questions arose about whether the prosecution could properly establish the transactions it needed to prove and, critically, whether it could demonstrate that our client had received, controlled or dealt with the allegedly fraudulent funds.
Without admissible evidence connecting him to the operation of the account, the prosecution case faced a serious evidentiary gap. We wrote to the prosecution setting out those deficiencies in detail and invited it to reconsider whether the fraud charge could properly proceed to trial. The response came quickly. Within hours, the prosecutor allocated to conduct the trial informed our office that the fraud charge would be withdrawn.
For our client, the outcome brought an end to a prosecution built largely around the assumption that because the bank account was in his name, he must have been responsible for it.
The case demonstrated why that assumption can be dangerous in modern fraud investigations. Identity theft, online banking and digital verification processes can allow accounts to be created using another person’s information without that person’s knowledge.
The movement of funds into cryptocurrency can make the trail even more difficult to follow.
In cases of this kind, the real questions are not simply whose name appears on an account. The important issues can include who created the account, what identity material was used, who accessed it, who controlled the funds, where the money went, and whether the financial records relied upon by the prosecution are actually admissible.
In this case, careful examination of both the identity evidence and the bank records showed that the prosecution could not establish those matters against our client.
The charge was withdrawn before trial, allowing him to move forward without a fraud conviction arising from conduct that, on the evidence, appeared to have been committed by someone using his stolen identity.