Chapter 2- Matt Costa “The Alias”
Here I am going to introduce you to “Matt Costa”, who is based on a real person. A person whose identity Jessica used to catfish me. Jessica took a person she knew, invented a new personality, new name, and a full backstory. It still shocks me to this day how different these two people were, despite them both being Jessica. You’ll notice all the images are blurred to protect this person’s identity.
How Jessica knew Matt
Blurred image to protect persons identity
Matt Costa was Jessica’s friend from high school- Bluevale in Kitchener. She said he was a typical jock in high school with a good balance of nerd. He was big into hockey and baseball. She told me his favorite team was the San Jose Sharks, but given his proximity to Toronto growing up he was also a Toronto Maple Leafs and Jays fan. She sent me quite a few photos of him in a Blue Jays hat for example.
She also told me his family came from quite a bit of money—he drove an escalade to school and would be the one consistently driving his friends to and from places in high school. I remember at the time I had no idea what an “escalade” was and Jessica thought that was very funny -how sheltered I was / didn’t have much experience with wealth.
The fake detailed life of Matt costa
This section is designed to illustrate how many details and pre-planned personality traits Jessica baked into this alternate persona. It all seemed so natural to me and set the stage for her many future lies and deceit.
Jessica said her and Matt used to study together at his house, that he was a good teacher and straight A student. Matt was going to UBC, specifically the Okanagan campus (at least in the early days- he eventually went to Western University to “be closer to me”), to study genetics as his goal was to become a doctor. He would share with me the different classes he had, profs he liked, and research he was working on.
He had an interest in cancer research, breast cancer specifically. He used to joke “it’s because I love boobies”. I even found some scientific abstracts by the real “Matt” throughout the years outside our conversations when I was searching for him. These were all semi-aligned with the information he was giving me— meaning she was following the real Matt’s life quite closely.
[2011-03-03, 3:01:39 PM] me: really? thats intense, i hope you get it!
[2011-03-03, 3:04:06 PM] Matt Costa: would be nice
[2011-03-03, 3:04:08 PM] Matt Costa: :)
[2011-03-03, 3:06:11 PM] me: sounds like alot of work too tho.
[2011-03-03, 3:09:16 PM] Matt Costa: lol yah maybe u can help me out:Pi think the focus of the lab is breast cancer
[2011-03-03, 3:09:45 PM] Matt Costa: n musculoskeletal tumors
[2011-03-03, 3:13:06 PM] me: that sounds like it could be pretty cool
[2011-03-03, 3:13:28 PM] me: or rather something interesting to study
[2011-03-03, 3:15:21 PM] Matt Costa: yah were gonna be translating gene expression profiles so hopefully its as goodas it sounds.the thing is 98 percent of the other ppl ttrying to get in this lab are graduate tas lol
Matt had a Facebook profile, despite it being fairly sparse, but he would say he wasn’t big into social media. At the time this made sense to me when social media wasn’t as big.
He had an entire life in BC. Matt had 4 roommates, all with individual personalities and a dog name Noodles. Matt said they named the dog Noodles because it “ate a bunch of noodles”. He would send me pictures of his home, the dog, walks in Okanagan that he would take with Noodles.
Noodles was a brown lab, which is perfect because I told Jessica I had a black lab growing up and she knew what types of dogs I liked and how much animals meant to me.
The Alias Family
I would also get pictures of Matt both as a kid (teenager) and as an adult, like you do when you show your new partner funny pictures of you when you were young. I would get pictures of his family: one brother and one sister, his mom, and he would talk about his Dad as well. His mom was a doctor and his dad was in insurance, so they had money. He would use this wealth a lot to make promises throughout the relationship. Jessica also created a persona for Matt’s sister and mother and would message me as them throughout the years.
The ex girlfriend
Jessica said she used to be close with his ex-girlfriend, who she would consistently call crazy, and had a big falling out. For the purposes of this story, I will call her Julia. She said Matt and Julia used to do everything together, and she was their staple third wheel. She would tell me all the things Julia told her Matt would do—like buy her nice things, lots of sexual scenarios they had together, how their relationship had many ups and downs but was crazy passionate for about a year.
Jessica would also send me pictures of Julia, and previous messages she had sent to Matt. A whole previous life. It turns out she was using experiences and messages from another catfishing relationship she pursued during high school. I go over this later in “Chapter 9: My Message to Jessica”.
Overall, Matt seemed like your typical 19 year old: a horny, jockey dude with a lot of money—who also had a nerdy, sensitive side. At 18, this felt like a really good match.
