A photo of Lauren McGrath taken in 2013. Her photos were used in a fake Facebook account used to trick women into having sex with a man who claimed to be a porn recruiter. (Courtesy of Lauren McGrath)

The Stranger ran a deeply disturbing account last week of a Seattle man using a fake Facebook profile of a porn recruiter to trick women into having sex with him. Now, a D.C. woman says her image was unknowingly used to perpetuate the scam.

“It’s a gross feeling. I want to cut my hair, get glasses, look like a totally different person. I feel like he’s stolen my face from me,” says Lauren McGrath.

Photos McGrath posted to Facebook over the span of years wound up as the face of a woman named “Deja Stwalley” on the site. Six Seattle women told the paper that “Stwalley” befriended them on Facebook, posing as a porn recruiter who was trying to help women get into the business without getting screwed over. But to make sure they could “handle” it, they’d have to take part in a sex-based audition. Three of the women went through with it.

Allysia Bishop said that “Stwalley” befriended her in 2013, when she was 19. After Bishop agreed to a shoot with someone named Matt, she showed up to an apartment and later recounted this experience to The Stranger:

“He had a little checklist of things I was comfortable doing in the future, like are you fine with bondage, are you fine with whatever,” she tells me over the phone. Bishop also remembers Matt making vodka screwdrivers. “He checked a little checklist off and said fine, all right we’ll take some pictures. All the while, I was drinking. He was just making me more drinks and more drinks.”

Bishop says she drank so much that she nearly blacked out. And that’s when she claims that Matt said they had to have sex. “He was like, ‘Well, we have to have sex, because if we don’t then how am I going to know you’re for real and you’ll actually be able to do this in the industry? So you have to prove to me you’re not going to bail out.'”

Bishop says that she never would have had sex with Matt if she didn’t think it was for the audition. She wasn’t attracted to him. Bishop left Matt’s apartment upset but didn’t quite understand why. All she knew was that she felt violated.

That same day, Bishop slit her wrists in a bathtub.

According to The Stranger, the man they met was freelance journalist Matt Hickey. Bishop and two other victims have screenshots of their conversations. All three positively identified Hickey as the man they had sex with.

The thread began to unravel when a woman suspicious of the account got in touch with “Stwalley.” When she asked for a talent waiver, the account supplied the name of a talent agency that appears not to exist.

The Stranger tracked down the real Deja Stwalley, who now has a different last name. The account was a complete surprise to her, but she said that Hickey had a “weirdo crush” on her in grade school. The “Stwalley” account has since been deleted.

Hickey, who has covered and spoken out against Gamergate, called the story “weird and also ridiculous,” but declined to offer much in the way of additional comment to The Stranger. One of the only accounts that appear to be affiliated with Hickey and still active is a GoFundMe page seeking help paying for surgery for a cyst on his butt. His website has been scrubbed, replaced only with: “Don’t believe everything you read, please. I’ll have more to say soon when I’m able to.”

As the story made the rounds in Seattle, hundreds of people shared a Facebook post about it. One of McGrath’s family friends saw it, recognized the photo, and got in touch.

When she got the message, McGrath’s first instinct was to laugh it off as the antics of “some sad, pathetic loser,” but then she reread the story a few times and a feeling of absolute foreboding came over her.

“Reading about the girl who had slit her wrist, all the lives that had been ruined by it,” McGrath says. “These girls, whether its intentional or not, they will always associate my face with what happened to them.”

Overcome with anger, she posted his image with the following note:

“This is journalist MATT HICKEY. Matt stole my photos, created a fake profile, and scammed women into having sex with him by claiming to be a porn producer and ‘auditioning’ them as his fake personas assistant. This notherfucker used my photos and my face to do all this, so here is his! Know his face, he certainly knows mine.”

And then the comments from her friends started to roll in; they remembered him.

“He lived in D.C. three or four years ago, and he was a regular at some bars in Adams Morgan,” McGrath says. Friends recalled him sitting and writing at Pharmacy Bar. When she showed the photo to her current boss at DC9, “All the color drained from her face, and she said, ‘I know exactly who that guy is.'” Other friends have said that they’ve seen him around D.C. in recent days.

McGrath, who has no recollection of meeting Hickey, assumes that they had mutual friends on Facebook and he just plucked her photos. “The running theory is he used these pictures as an innocuous looking girl to make these women trust him,” she says. “Because I’m wearing a romper. I’m an every girl.”

The Stranger contacted Hickey, and he texted back: “I don’t know McGrath. Let me get back to you in the morning.”

Hickey has not been charged with a crime, though the Seattle Police Department told the paper they have opened several investigations. A lawyer told the paper that a prosecutor could possibly try the case as third-degree rape, because the false pretext violated consent.

Meanwhile, McGrath, who is considering legal action, is gutted that her image was used to victimize these women.

“I’m in solidarity with the women that he violated. I’m sorry that this happened,” she says. “As much as I know it’s not my fault, it is still really disturbing to know that my face has been attached to this whole thing.”

She concluded a second public note: “Matt, women like us don’t forget, and I have zero issue with making sure your story, your reputation, is known.”