Mike met 'Caroline' on a dating website. But she was catfishing him, for the second time.

If we've learned anything in the era of dating apps, it's to be extra careful about who we trust online.

Being catfished is a real concern.

… But imagine being catfished by the same person twice.

Enter Mike, a man featured on MTV series Catfish, whose story is one that has to be seen to be believed.

Dating translate. Post continues after video.

When Mike sparked up a conversation with Caroline on Plenty of Fish, he was instantly drawn in by her flowing red hair and sparkling eyes, then hooked by her fun and “goofy” personality.

Their conversations started off as friendly chit-chat, but things soon progressed to a deep emotional connection. She shared that she was living with colon cancer – which Mike’s mother had recently passed away from.

Caroline became Mike’s online girlfriend, and his feelings for her intensified over the year and a half they spent chatting online and on the phone every day.

Despite living in the same city, however, the pair's attempts to take their relationship out of the digital realm continued to fail.

Red flags had started to present themselves.

On the afternoon of a planned meet-up at a shopping centre; Caroline had a panic attack and sped off. This happened each time they made similar arrangements.

Caroline claimed she was too anxious to meet him because of her illness.

She instead had friends leave notes at Mike’s door, referring to him as “boo-bear.” She regularly texted him photos of the exterior of his workplace when she was walking by. Yet they had still never met face-to-face.

Months went by before Mike began to suspect all was not as it seemed.

As it turns out, Caroline’s real name is actually Heather. She did not have cancer, and looked nothing like the woman in the dating profile photos Mike had fallen for.

But he did actually know her.

How?

She'd deceived him online before.

Calling on the help of Nev and Max - the program's hosts - he finally managed to arrange a meeting with Caroline, who turned out to be a woman he had encountered on the same dating website while she was pretending to be another woman named Claire.

Heather claims she created the Claire profile with her friend to see if her husband was cheating on her.

Mike messaged “Claire” and, thinking he was “cool as crap,” Heather then gave Mike her real number and revealed her true identity.

But when Mike “wasn’t very nice and didn’t want to be her friend,” she created the Caroline profile to mess with him as revenge.

But it doesn't end there.

Eventually, Max and Nev set up a video chat date between Mike and the real Caroline (whose name is actually Claire) and would you believe it, they actually hit it off.

In the end, Claire decided to stay just friends so as not to hurt Heather's feelings - a woman she had never met.