Man duped into thinking he's been dating Katy Perry for six years

Catfish presenter Nev Schulman described the case as 'the most ridiculous thing' he's ever heard

Rather staggeringly, there are a large number of people who find themselves lured into a cyber relationship by someone adopting a fictional online persona. Such an instance was the subject of 2010 documentary Catfish.

In fact, the directors discovered there are so many cases of this that they went on to create an entire TV show about it for MTV.

While it's become easy to feel desensitised to many of the featured victims' stories, one of the series' most alarming cases has presented itself in the form of Spencer Morrill, a man who believes he's been in a six-year relationship with singer Katy Perry.

Speaking to presenters Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, Morrill describes how he's convinced she's the person he's been exchanging emails and texts with for over half a decade.

"It was an immediate connection," he states. "A million 'I love yous' back and forth. It was pretty cool."

Morrill went on to explain how, despite Perry's past marriage to Russell Brand and her current relationship with Orlando Bloom, he made an engagement ring for the singer that cost him "25 percent of his savings."

A bewildered Schulman and Joseph went on to discover that the woman Morrill's speaking to is actually a woman named Harriet who lives in Gloucester.

In the episode, the woman offers Morrill an apology for stringing him along all this time.

"I just got to a point to where I couldn’t imagine like not talking to you," she explained. "I’ve been through some tough times throughout the time we’ve been talking the past six years. Like my dad died two years ago... I’m like genuinely sorry. I can’t change what I did, but I understand that it was really wrong."

Perry is yet to respond to the episode following its US airing on Thursday evening (18 August).