In season four finale of MTV's "Catfish," single mom Brittany asked Nev Schulman and Max Joseph to help her meet her online love, a Marine with PTSD. A fan of the show, Brittany knew all the tell tale signs of a catfish, but she held on to hope that the man of her dreams was real.
"I know when I'm in love," the 24-year-old mom of three wrote in the subject line of the email she sent to Schulman and Joseph, asking for their help.
The Tempe, Ariz. resident gushed about Bryon, the man she describes as "the perfect guy." She fell for Byron, a 27-year-old Marine living in Indiana who suffers from PTSD. Brittany admitted that there were warning signs, like Bryon's reluctancy to talk on the phone or video chat, which is why she had her doubts.
"She definitely has a lot more on the line than most anyone who's ever written into this show," Joseph said. Schulman and Joseph agreed to fly out to help Brittany.
Brittany opened up to Schulman and Joseph about her troubled past. Her mother went to prison when she was younger, and she didn't get along with her father. She got pregnant with her daughter at 16, then she met her ex-husband and had two more children, but the couple soon divorced. That's when she met Bryon.
"Maybe that's why I open up to someone so fast and I fall for someone so fast because I've never had that love and affection from anyone in my family," Brittany said.
She said that Bryon was accepting of her three children and she felt comfortable enough with him to let him into her children's lives as well, even letting them speak to him on the phone occasionally.
Brittany sent Schulman and Joseph all the information she had on Bryon and they got to work. One of the first photos on Bryon's page, of him dressed in uniform holding a sniper rifle, came back with 1,200 Google image search results. They quickly found that the photos on Bryon's page linked back to a different Marine from Long Island who is stationed in Japan. A reverse-phone number search further proved that the Bryon profile was fake and linked back to a person named Heather in Owenton, Ky.
When Schulman called Bryon, a woman named Heather answered the phone and said she was Bryon's sister. Heather came up with excuses for Bryon not to meet with Brittany in person. Schulman was able to persuade them to agree to meet. They arrive in Kentucky with Brittany and Schulman knocked on the door, finding Heather instead of Bryon.
Heather walked out to meet Brittany for the first time face to face and Schulman asked if her brother Bryon was coming outside, too.
"I made it up," Heather said, "I mean it was me."
Heather explained that she wasn't a Marine, although it was something that she wanted to do and she made the profile as way to escape her small town, where being gay wasn't accepted and she struggled with coming out as a lesbian.
"You did help me get through my depression and thank you for that," Brittany told Heather, "but I don't know if I could ever be friends with you."
Watch a clip from the episode below.
