Beauty queen tracked down and exposed ‘Scotland’s most notorious catfish’

Abbie Draper was first contacted by catfish, Adele Rennie in 2014 and has spent over a decade gathering evidence and speaking to other victims to bring her crimes to light

In a previous life Abbie Draper was a finalist in the Miss Scotland beauty pageant and travelled the world visiting many glamourous place as an air stewardess.

But in late 2014, she received a friend request from a person claiming to be ‘Dr David Graham’ – a doctor on the stroke ward her grandfather had been admitted to.

Twelve years later and the now 35-year-old is still reeling from the effects of ‘Scotland’s most notorious catfish’, Adele Rennie who has been jailed on four separate occasions for her crimes and is due to be released in March this year.

A new documentary – The Beauty Queen and the Catfish on the BBC – has spoken to six of the many women targeted by Rennie and takes a look at her crimes and the toll they took on her victims.

At first Abbie was delighted by the handsome doctor who has requested to be her friend and told the documentary: “He’s a really good looking guy, good haircut, has a good body, looked professional.”

For Abbie, who often posted videos of her dancing on social media, the first red flag came when the catfish asked her to perform at a charity ball for medics.

She happily agreed and went on to post about the event on social media, but shortly after she received a message from a stranger warning her not to trust “Dr David”.

Abbie then switched to detective mode and found other women who had been contacted by him as well. She set up a Facebook group called 007 with other victims and started digging deeper into who Dr David Graham was.

She said: “When I started looking deeper into David Graham’s Facebook, I started noticing it was all the same people commenting on his things. Then I started asking myself, ‘Are they real?’

“We would reverse image search so you can put an image into Google and find out where it came through. We found these profiles had actually been stolen from Instagram.

“There was a web of people – so you’ve got David here, and then you’ve got all these profiles validating that David is a real person. We screenshotted the other profiles as well.

“Time went so fast, and I didn’t sleep. I was sitting on my phone looking for things and my laptop. Before I knew it we were on like five, six in the morning – and then I’d have a quick sleep and then I’ll wake back up again. I was consumed by it all.”

The Sun has since discovered the picture of David Graham was in fact that of male model Craig Dunn.

The shocked salesman said he’d never heard of Adele Rennie and was blindsided when he was contacted by police.

He said: “I got a call from police saying there’s an ongoing case I’m involved in. The officer mentioned Adele Rennie but I’d never heard of her.

“He said she’d been chatting to women on dating sites like Tinder and using my pictures on Facebook, Instagram and social media. From what I could gather, she was trying to get naked photos and using my image to try to get up close and personal with these women.

“It must have been a horrible experience for them — no sane person would do what she did.”

The documentary spoke to six women who were targeted over a 15-year period – including Samantha, Lilly, Chloe, Kirsty and ‘Charlotte,’ who did not want to be identified.

Each of the women had their own story to tell of ‘Dr David Graham’ and the lengths he went to, to keep them onside.

Chloe said he had told her his young daughter had died from cancer and Lilly revealed he had sent her to the wrong address, telling her it was his house.

Samantha told how she tracked down and followed the car of ‘David Graham’ and watched a woman get out at the exact time she was on the phone to ‘him’.

She realised it was the same woman who had claimed to be the florist who had been delivered all of David’s flowers and presents to her.

The florist was Adele Rennie.

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