Britain's leading female brain surgeon has had her identity stolen on Facebook  for a fake page attacking Britain's new Olympic swimming champion Rebecca Adlington.

Fraudsters opened an entry under the name of Helen Fernandes, a consultant neurosurgeon at one of the country's top hospitals.

They used her photograph to lend credibility to the page and then posted comments attacking the champion swimmer.

Helen Fernandes' identity was stolen for an online attack on Rebecca Adlington, right - though the brain surgeon has no link with the swimmer

The surgeon has no link with the 19-year-old sportswoman and is baffled as to why her name was used for the character assassination.

Ms Fernandes, a surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, said: 'It certainly had me rattled.

'It is very worrying, especially when it makes people look professionally culpable. It is an area where I should not be discussing these matters in public at all.

'I didn't even understand what Facebook was until I received a call alerting me about the fraud.'

She added: 'If it were a little bit closer to home - say it was a posting relating to a patient I had treated, it would have been even more worrying.'

The page was set up on Sunday night while the surgeon was on holiday with her family in Italy.

By the following afternoon, hours after Adlington took gold in the 400m freestyle, a Facebook group had been set up, purportedly by Ms Fernandes, under a defamatory heading.

Misspelling the word 'slum', the untrue internet posting stated: 'How can a genuine Olympic champion come from the mega-slun that is Mansfield?

'Come on, GB is a third-rate nation when it comes to sport. And we are nation run by utter incompetents. The truth is out there. Helen Fernandes, consultant neurosurgeon, Cambridge.'

Enlarge 

Online lies: The Facebook page set up by fraudsters to attack Rebecca Adlington

Ms Fernandes's picture as it appears on the fake Facebook page - without her consent

Facebook agreed the account was false and has taken down the offending page.

A spokesman said today: 'Facebook does not condone content that it deems to be abusive or defamatory. After investigating the profile for Helen Fernandes, we found that it was a fake and removed it from the site.'

The ease with which a homepage was set up under Ms Fernandes's name will alarm Facebook. It would appear anybody can set up an account in any name - and there is no way to check its authenticity.

Facebook employs a team to search out abuses among its 90 million users.

Why Ms Fernandes was targeted is a mystery.

The 41-year-old mother-of-three, who lives in Barrington, near Cambridge, is one of only a handful of female neurosurgeons in Britain.

She has been awarded grants to carry out medical research and has had work published in the Lancet. She was appointed a consultant neurosurgeon at Addenbrooke's in 2002.

Policing Facebook may prove harder as it gets ever more popular.

Last month a company boss was awarded £22,000 at the High Court over fake entries, in what was thought to be the first successful privacy and defamation case involving the social networking site in Britain.

The false and defamatory profile of Matthew Firscht, 38, was created in June last year.