I was SO CLOSE to being Scammed by a FAKE Investing Instagram account

I get up at 5/5:30 am most days and yep the first thing I do is check my mobile phone messages. Don’t judge me.

I noticed that a BIG Podcaster/Instagram account had followed me overnight. A man, Peter McCormack @whatbitcoindid whom I had listened to being interviewed by Claer Barrett on the FT Podcast last week. I felt a bit honoured that he had followed me and I DM’d him to say that I had enjoyed his interview and had learnt a lot.

And then the messages started immediately, it was like he smelt blood and jumped on the lead (the covert fake investing instagram account). Notice that he didn’t reply to my reference of the interview with Claer that I had listened to.

Obviously looking back at the conversation now I can see the red flags, but it passed me by at 6am. His English is terrible and the messages just don’t make sense.

I was confused, why would Claer interview a dodgy trading scammer for the FT? His account looked so genuine, all the podcast images of Peter McCormack are there, a lot of followers. I took a closer look at his profile, can you spot the scam?

The guy wasn’t giving up. I replied You are a scammer. I have reported you to the real Peter and to Instagram. And then he stopped following me. Too late to affect me as I had already taken screen shots.

He found me because I had commented on Claer B’s Instagram post saying that I had listened to and enjoyed the podcast! There are trolls scouring the internet for leads on realistic ways to contact you.

BE CAREFUL with Scams

Be so careful when you get DM messages from people who you think are accounts that you follow, especially investment accounts/crypto accounts or even accounts that have just run a competition. Check the @ address carefully for extra letters or numbers. If there is a link to click on, don’t do it, its likely a scam.

If the English is bad like this one, don’t engage just report the page. Again if they use confusing language again don’t engage and report to Instagram that its an impersonator.

And if they ask for your phone number…run!

If you get any messages that sounds strange and you’re not sure DM them over to me on Instagram (the real me) as a 2nd point of view. It is most likely that it is a scam.