Last week I received an urgent IM from a close friend. She’s recently delved into the world of online dating, and wasn’t so sure about this guy who had messaged her.

“Go into my profile and tell me what you think,” she instructed. “Do his pictures look legit?”

The guy did look vaguely familiar…kind of like Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s ex husband. He was pretty handsome. His photos were all of him walking, which was kind of weird, but then the last picture was of him and 2 boys. The 2nd boy appeared to have a black face and white legs.

“His face just looks dark because he has a hat on and the picture is taken from far away,” my friend said.

“No,” I insisted. “It really looks like this guy tried to photoshop David Banda White. But honestly…who would be that dumb?”

So, I took to Google Images and searched “Guy Ritchie.” On the first page of the search I found one of the EXACT pictures this guy was using on his dating profile. A little more searching found that the man had, in fact, photoshopped David Banda to be White: using a picture from PEOPLE MAGAZINE, which I’m fairly certain I’d also seen on Celebrity Baby Blog.

At my friend’s urging, I may or may not have returned the man’s message with one of my own…which may have included links to the various pictures he’d ripped and a suggestion to “next time, just be honest.” My friend also filed a complaint with the website. The next day, whether by embarrassment or edict, his profile was gone.

So would-be online daters, here is my advice to you:
1) Don’t lie, especially not on a religious dating website.
2) If you’re going to lie about what you look like, don’t choose the recent ex of one of the world’s biggest superstars. Go to the park and snap a picture of some random person or use a little-known Calvin Klein model.
3) Don’t try to pull one over someone whose friend is a celeb gossip junky.