Help! How do you cope with trolls creating multiple/fake accounts?

[محروم.كوم]

I have a pathological attention-seeker who creates multiple accounts on my forum, inventing dramatic problems so lots of people pitch in with help and support. She is a very skilled con-artist who sucks lots of people in.

I have banned half a dozen incarnations of her so far. She's sufficiently tech savvy to use a new IP address and email account each time; we only detect her because a few users are good at spotting her patterns of language use, and then her reactions to being identified are more or less unmistakable.

You can imagine the problem: now we have new users who might or might not be her - nowhere near enough evidence to ban, but enough for suspicion. We end up with a climate of suspicion and mistrust which is not good for the forum at all.

Has anyone else dealt with this? If so, how did you go about it?


Huge thanks for any help. I'm at my wits end with this one. __DEFINE_LIKE_SHARE__