Criminal Versatility & Social Deviancy: When Deception Becomes a Transferable Skill

A person creates a dating profile using someone else’s photograph. Their age changes by 6 years. Their job becomes more impressive .Their relationship status becomes conveniently uncomplicated. They begin talking to a stranger who is lonely, hopeful or simply open to meeting someone new.

At first, nothing is stolen except reality.

Then the invented person acquires a history. There is a dead spouse, an overseas contract, a difficult childhood, perhaps a child who needs something. The stories become more elaborate because they are working. Attention arrives. Trust follows. Eventually there may be money, access, sexual images, personal information, accommodation, professional introductions or some other advantage.

We call one version of this catfishing. But catfishing becomes far more interesting when we stop treating it as an isolated Internet phenomenon and ask a darker question:

What if the false identity is not the behaviour, but simply one environment in which a much broader behavioural pattern has found somewhere to operate?

Criminology uses the term criminal versatility to describe offending across different categories rather than persistent specialisation in a single offence. Research has repeatedly found versatility within offending populations, although people and offending histories differ considerably. The concept matters beyond criminal records because human behaviour does not organise itself neatly around legal categories.

A person who becomes comfortable exploiting trust may carry that permission from one part of life into another.

Different setting. Different technique. Different victim.

Same relationship with the boundary.

The Behaviour Travels

We tend to imagine wrongdoing according to its location. The dishonest employee belongs to the workplace. The manipulative partner belongs to the relationship. The online impersonator belongs to the Internet. The fraudulent trader belongs to business.

But the person walks between those environments.

That is where social deviancy and criminal versatility become particularly interesting. Someone may fabricate achievements professionally, manipulate intimate partners emotionally, borrow money under false pretences socially, misuse information institutionally and construct a fictional identity online. Not every act will necessarily be criminal. Some may be unethical, exploitative, antisocial or simply dishonest.

The continuity lies elsewhere: deception has become useful.

This does not mean that every person who tells a lie is progressing towards criminality. Human beings exaggerate, conceal, avoid and occasionally behave badly. Nor does childhood misbehaviour doom anyone to adult offending. Development is not destiny.

But repeated behaviour requires repeated decisions.

Background may explain vulnerability to certain behaviours. Personality may influence impulsivity, empathy, sensation seeking or self-control. Opportunity matters. Social environment matters. Yet explanation should not quietly become absolution. When an adult repeatedly deceives different people, adapts the deception when challenged and continues after seeing the harm it causes, we are no longer discussing a single accidental lapse.

We are discussing choices that have acquired a repertoire.

How a Repertoire Begins

The beginning may be surprisingly small.

Someone discovers that presenting themselves differently produces a better result. An old photograph gets more attention. An embellished CV opens a door. A fabricated emergency produces sympathy. A false excuse avoids accountability. A borrowed identity wins admiration.

And then something psychologically important happens:

It works.

Successful deception can teach a dangerous lesson. The lesson is not merely, “ I got away with that lie. “ It can become, “ Reality is negotiable when reality does not give me what I want.”

The next boundary may therefore become easier to test.

This is not necessarily a staircase from minor misconduct to serious crime. Versatility can move sideways. The method changes according to opportunity. In one environment the currency may be money; In another, sex; elsewhere it may be status, housing, sympathy, professional access, attention or control.

What develops is not necessarily expertise in one offence. It may be expertise in locating human openings.

Loneliness is an opening. Ambition can be an opening. Grief can be an opening. Vanity can be an opening. Compassion can be an opening.

None makes the victim responsible.

It makes the exploiter observant.

Catfishing: The Laboratory of the Invented Self

Catfishing demonstrates this exceptionally well because the digital world allows identity to be edited before another person ever encounters it.

A photograph can be stolen. A career can be invented. Geography can explain why meetings are impossible. Technology problems can explain why cameras never work. A dramatic history can accelerate intimacy. The target sees not the person’s ordinary life but a curated narrative designed to generate a particular response.

Romance scammers use precisely this architecture. Consumer protection authorities warn about recurring patterns: Moving conversations away from platforms, persisted inability to meet, urgent financial problems, a request for difficult to recover payments and profile photographs that appear under other identities.

The most psychologically sophisticated catfish does not simply invent an attractive person.

They discover what you are waiting for and become it.

If you want tenderness, they become tender. If you admire achievement, they become accomplished. If you have been neglected, they become attentive. If you long to rescue someone, tragedy appears. If you want permanence, they discuss a future unusually quickly.

The false identity is therefore not merely a mask.

It is a mirror engineered to reflect desire.

When One Deception Needs Another

A fabricated identity has an expensive weakness: It must constantly be maintained.

One lie creates logistical problems that reality would not create. Why can we not video call? Why does your surname differ here? Why can I not find the company you supposedly run? Why have we cancelled our third meeting? Why does that photograph appear elsewhere? Why does your biography keep changing?

The versatile deceiver responds not by returning to reality, but by producing additional explanations.

The broken camera.

The confidential job.

The sudden bereavement.

The frozen bank account.

The controlling ex-partner.

The lost passport.

The emergency abroad.

The important warning sign is not one strange event. Real people have strange events.

It is the constellation.

When ordinary verification repeatedly produces extraordinary explanations, stop evaluating each explanation separately and examine the pattern they collectively create.

The Moral Escape Hatch

Sustained exploitation also benefits from rationalisation.

“Everyone lies online.”

“I never forced them.”

“ The offered the money “

“They should have checked.”

“They wanted to believe it “

“No one was physically hurt “

Notice what these explanations accomplish. Responsibility slowly migrates from the person who constructed the deception to the person who believed it.

That is morally convenient.

Victims of sophisticated deception are often described as gullible because observers already know the ending. They see the warning signs assembled together. The victim experienced them sequentially, surrounded by affection, urgency, hope and plausible explanations.

Intelligence does not immunise people against emotional manipulation indeed, intelligent people can sometimes become exceptionally good at explaining away contradictions once they are emotionally invested.

The relevant question is therefore not, “How could anyone believe this?”

It is, “What information was available to them at the moment they were asked to believe it?”

Protect Yourself by Verifying the Infrastructure

The most useful defence is not cynicism. It is verification.

Do not attempt to determine whether someone Is genuine solely by asking them more questions. A practised deceiver controls their own answers.

Verify the infra-structure of the story.

Where reasonable and proportionate, independently check the things that should leave independent traces: No claims, organisations, public achievements and identities. Reverse-image- search profile photographs. Be cautious when normal live contact or meetings are repeatedly avoided. Keep early communication on established platforms rather than being hurried elsewhere. Never allow online relationship to turn you into a bank, payment intermediary or emergency fund.

Most importantly, resist manufactured urgency. Urgency is useful to manipulation because verification takes time.

If money has already been sent and fraud is suspected, contact the bank or payment provider quickly, preserve messages and transaction records, report the relevant account to the platform and use the appropriate fraud reporting or law enforcement channel. If threats, blackmail or sextortion enter the situation, do not bargain indefinitely or begin a private investigation that could place you at greater risk.

And involve another human being.

Manipulation thrives inside a closed narrative. A trusted outsider has not accumulated the emotional investment that makes each new explanation feel necessary.

Deviance is Not the Same as Difference

There is one distinction worth protecting.

Not all social deviance is destructive.

Societies have often called people deviant because they refused unjust conventions. Whistleblowers violate organisational expectations. Reformers challenge accepted practises. Innovators ignore rules that everyone else assumes are permanent.

Constructive deviance challenges a norm because the norm deserves examination.

Predatory deviance breaks a boundary because another person’s interests have become expendable.

The difference is not conformity.

It is consequence, intention, consent and accountability.

The Operating System Beneath the Act

Perhaps this is why criminal versatility deserves attention outside criminology.

We are accustomed to looking for offences as separate objects: Fraud, theft, coercion, impersonation, harassment, exploitation. Institutions are often arranged the same way. Each event acquires its own box. Human beings do not live in boxes.

The more revealing question may sometimes be whether the same person repeatedly carries a recognisable strategy across relationships, workplaces, institutions and digital environments: obtain trust, locate vulnerability, distort reality, acquire benefit, rationalise harm, change tactics when challenged.

Catfishing is then not simply somebody pretending to be more attractive on the Internet. At its most exploitive, it becomes a demonstration of behavioural portability – the capacity to move deception into whatever environment currently offers opportunity.

People often look for the crime.

Perhaps we should become better at recognising the behavioural operating system beneath it.

Because the most consequential boundary may not be the first one somebody crosses.

It may be the moment they discover that crossing it worked- and decide that the next boundary is negotiable too.

Sources and further reading

• Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice: What to Know About Romance Scams; 2025 and 2026 consumer alerts on romance scams.

• National Institute of Justice: Harris, Smallbone, Dennison & Knight (2009) , Specialisation and Versatility in Sexual Offenders Refereed for Civil Commitment.