Yvette Morales: Dupes Grad Student Into Thinking She Is Ailing, Lovelorn Anchorwoman

Courtesy Kleberg County Jail

Yvette Morales: Not Katia Uriarte

​Despite being smitten with Kingsville TV reporter Katia Uriarte, her suitor just couldn't take any more.

The unidentified Texas A&M-Kingsville grad student penned a sorrowful break-up e-mail and sent it to her Facebook inbox.While he was still in love with her, he wrote, he simply could not afford to keep delivering the money orders he had been sending her over the past four years.

Since 2006, despite never meeting her in person, the man had sent around $12,000 to the newswoman to help her fight her breast cancer, believing all along that if they could just see this long battle through to the end, the two of them could be together, just like she promised.

And it's easy to see how a guy could become smitten with the gorgeous Uriarte, though it must be said, a little hard to imagine investing all that time and money in a woman who never consented to a single face-to-face date.

But it wasn't that Uriarte, who works at KIII , was giving the man the cold shoulder. Nope. Until he sent her the Facebook break-up letter, she did not even know he existed. Nor did she have breast cancer, and she never received any of the money he sent her to fight her non-existent struggle.

Instead, the woman on the receiving end of the man's largesse was one Yvette Morales, a 41-year-old Corpus woman who is, shall we say, rather less telegenic than Uriarte.

Courtesy KIII

Katia Uriarte, not Yvette Morales

​Morales tricked the man by propping up her story with photos she would e-mail him taken straight from Uriarte's Facebook page. Police believe she also bolstered her story by cribbing tips about what would be on the evening news from promos she saw in the afternoon. Morales told the man that her cancer was a secret because her bosses would fire her if they knew.

All in all, the spell she cast was so convincing that police say the man was very hard to persuade that he had not, in fact, ever been romancing Uriarte. He finally did come around though and pressed a charge of felony theft against Morales, who could possibly also be facing federal mail fraud charges. Morales is a free woman after posting a personal recognizance bond.

Uriarte tipped off the cops after getting the email from her duped beau, who was too embarrassed to be identified.

Citing similar concerns, an official from Texas A&M-Kingsville also asked that the man's affiliation to the school's graduate program be kept secret, but that request was widely ignored.

(Just kidding.)