Coleen Rooney ‘carried out dummy run’ before Wagatha Christie Instagram hunt

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Coleen Rooney carried out a "dummy run" ahead of her now infamous Wagatha Christie mole hunt, new documents are said to show.

The author caused an online sensation in October 2019 after she detailed how she had turned detective in a bid to identify who was leaking stories about her to the tabloid press.

In a Twitter post, she explained that by strategically blocking everyone but a single person from her private Instagram account, she had been able to identify that person’s account as the source of the articles.

“It's....... Rebekah Vardy's account,” she wrote.

Now, court documents seen by The Sun newspaper reportedly outline the extraordinary lengths she went to in a bid to execute her plan – including a test run of the scheme.

The 35-year-old – wife of former Manchester United and England star Wayne – firstly drew up a list of a list of possible suspects from 300 trusted friends and family that followed her Instagram account.

After zeroing in on Ms Vardy as the possible source, Ms Rooney posted a series of fake stories that only her prime suspect could see.

But before she executed the plan for real, she ran what was effectively a dress rehearsal where other posts were seen by other people as well as the 39-year-old wife of Leicester City striker Jamie.

Soon after, she then blocked everyone but Ms Vardy and created a series of fake posts "interspersed with true or mundane ones" – several of which ended up in the press.

"This led to her belief that it was the Claimant [Vardy] who was responsible for the leak, given her established history and habitual practice of providing private information to journalists and the Press,” the documents are said to say.

The papers are part of a libel battle currently progressing through the courts after Ms Vardy sued Ms Rooney for libel following the public accusation of betrayal.

Their libel battle is expected to kick-off at the High Court in April after attempts at meditation between the two parties failed.