We look not for people, but for what they have hidden. The stories presented in the series “The Detective Investigates” are based on real cases investigated by Hayk Gabrielyan, Chairman of the Association of Private Detectives of Armenia, and Gabrielyan & Partners Detective Bureau, Armenia’s only officially registered private detective organisation. From now on, Aravot will publish the detective’s extraordinary findings every Friday.
I got a call from someone very close to me, Narine. I could tell from her voice that something serious had happened. She was outraged. Someone had opened fake Instagram and TikTok pages in the name of her 18-year-old niece, Armine, using photoshopped pictures, and was rapidly spreading them online.
The problem wasn’t just the fake page. The girl was soon to be engaged to the young man she loved. So the blow was aimed not only at her, but at her name and the reputation of her future family. Narine soon came to the office. She was furious — so incensed that she was ready, quite literally, to take the law into her own hands against whoever had done this. I suggested we sit down and talk calmly. One of the first rules of detective work is to defuse tension and steer the conversation onto calmer ground.
We began. First I asked to see the pages. After a few minutes it was already clear that we were dealing with an organised, deliberate, targeted attack. The pages were new but spreading fast. The photos had been edited so that at first glance they looked real. But our systems can immediately detect unnatural shadow angles and pixel inconsistencies. I also sent the images to colleagues in the association to check the metadata and try to determine the original source and the model of the device used to create the files.
Fakers have one constant problem: they are in a hurry. When someone wants to discredit a person quickly, they act hastily, and haste always leaves traces. We started with the simplest steps. We documented everything: screenshots, page links, posting times, follower lists, the first people to share. Our team connected to a system provided by our colleagues that analyses probable IP ranges and registration patterns. It turned out that when creating one of the fake pages, the author had switched off their VPN for a split second, leaving a small but fatal digital “footprint” of their real provider and location.
We noticed an interesting pattern. The fake pages had only just been created, yet they already had several dozen “active” viewers who reacted instantly to every post and shared the pages themselves. That told us a lot. In cases like this there is usually no real audience — just a handful of accounts (fakes) run by the same person to create the impression that “the whole internet is talking about it”. In other words, we were dealing not with a random troll but with someone who had a clear goal.
Then I asked the question that is often the most important in cases like this:
“Is there anyone in the life of the girl or her future fiancé, Vazgen, who might want to stop this engagement?”
There were a few seconds of silence. No one came to mind. It seemed there was nobody who would want to interfere. I asked for Vazgen’s details. In detective work, the most important thread in the tangle sometimes comes not from technology but from human relationships. So we began looking into the young man’s past. Using OSINT (open-source intelligence) — our own resources and those of world-renowned colleagues — we began to “take apart” his past connections online.
On his social media we found several followers whose activity had dropped sharply right after he posted the engagement photo with Armine. We started examining their accounts one by one. Among them was a user named Nanar who, before the engagement was announced, had been actively liking Vazgen’s Facebook photos and leaving all sorts of romantic emojis under them.
We focused our resources on Nanar. Using social media archives and the classic “password recovery” trick, we obtained a few letters of the email address linked to the fake page (the rest were masked with asterisks) and the last two digits of the phone number. Those digits and letters matched Nanar’s real details perfectly — the person we had suspected from the start. Further investigation also revealed that her IP address matched the traces left by the fake accounts.
After that, everything moved at lightning speed. We identified her and passed the information to Vazgen. And an important fact emerged: Nanar, who was behind the whole story, had once been close to Vazgen, until he cut her out of his life. But that hadn’t curbed her insatiable desire to keep “living” on his social media pages. It is a classic psychological state: when the current partner becomes an ex, she doesn’t lose the hope of becoming the current one again.
A name, a phone number and an IP address alone are not yet proof. A detective works only with facts. We assembled the full body of evidence: matching posting times, links between the fake pages, comments spread by the same people — and preserved all the material so that no one could later claim “it’s been edited”. We put together a special folder containing not only printed screenshots but also a chart of the activity of the fake accounts she had created. The chart showed that all the fakes fell silent at night at exactly the same time — precisely when she was asleep. It was this girl’s digital verdict, compiled in a single folder.
Once the whole picture had come together, it was clear the game was over; all that remained was the final move. I decided to talk to her. But not as a detective. I called her as a courier.
“Hello, Nanar, there’s a delivery for you from a secret admirer. Could you come to the café near your workplace?”
She paused briefly, then agreed. The café wasn’t chosen at random: a busy place in central Yerevan, where people feel safer and are less likely to think they might end up in an awkward situation. We sat where we could see the entrance. Soon she came in. I watched not so much her face as her movements. When someone is confident of their innocence, they walk freely. When they are hiding something, the body gives them away. I waved to her, and she came over and sat down at our table.
I held a few seconds of silence, then very calmly put my phone on the table and opened the screenshots of the pages we had documented. Next to it I placed the folder in which the last digits of her phone number and their undeniable match with the fake page’s recovery details were underlined in red pencil. Physical evidence always breaks down psychological defences. Then I said a single sentence:
“Nanar, on the internet you can create a fake name, a fake photo and even a fake life. But the traces always belong to a real person.”
At first she tried to deny it. That is always the first reaction.
“That’s not me, you’re mistaken,” she said, trying to look indignant, but there was already a tremor in her voice.
Then I showed her the next piece of evidence.
“This IP address,” I said quietly, but clearly enough to cut through the background noise of the café, “belongs to your home network. And this is the model of the smartphone you used to log into that fake page at night.”
The key was to keep up the pace, presenting the evidence while steadily increasing the dose. Her breathing quickened noticeably. Her eyes darted anxiously from the papers on the table to the exit. Her hands, which had been gripping her bag tightly, began to tremble slightly. She swallowed hard. The colour drained from her face. The illusion that behind a screen she was untouchable and could spread slander and abuse left and right shattered at that very moment. Soon her words began to tangle. And finally came the moment when she understood the story was over.
It turned out that this whole “war of fakes” had been organised for one purpose: to wreck the engagement. An old grudge. Having lost her status as the current partner and become the ex, she had tried to damage the future that was about to become the present. But the case wasn’t closed until justice had been restored for the injured party. I gave her one chance to avoid police involvement and public disgrace: she had to admit her guilt in person and ask Armine for forgiveness.
The next day the atmosphere in our office felt like the calm five minutes before a nuclear war. Next to my desk sat Narine — the same woman who days earlier had been ready to take justice into her own hands — with the composure of someone savouring the triumph of justice. Her gaze was cold, her posture unyielding. And in the corner of the sofa, head bowed, sat Nanar. There was no trace left of her fake online self-confidence. Only fear and shame. Her fate depended on the decision of Narine and Armine: if they forgave her, she could leave in peace; if not, the evidence we had gathered would be handed to the police together with Armine’s complaint.
Sobbing, Nanar deleted all the fake pages from her phone for good. Then she looked at Narine and, in a barely audible, trembling voice, said:
“Please forgive me. I got tangled up in my own spite and didn’t realise how much pain I was causing. I promise I will never interfere in any way with your girl’s future family, and I will never do anything like this again.”
Narine was silent for about a minute — a long, oppressive minute. That silence was heavier than any shouting or even a slap. Then she said just one sentence:
“Consider this the biggest lesson of your life. Disappear from their lives for good.”
But the most important lesson of this story was a different one. Many people think you can hide on the internet. In reality, that is one of the biggest misconceptions. People can create fake accounts, fake names and fake stories. But they leave real traces. And that is exactly a detective’s job: not to give in to the noise, to think coolly, and in the end to find the person standing behind the fake page.
Hayk GABRIELYAN
Aravot daily
13.03.2026
Read at the source (in Armenian): The end of a fake