-Yesterday morning I discovered, via Instagram, my first fake profile. In other words, a profile claiming to be me. Not a fan page, but saying that they are me (see pic for reference). It’s kind of close to how my actual Instagram page is set up. There may be others but this is the first one that I’ve actually seen. How did I find out? Well, a couple of hours before a few of my friends messaged me about it, I got a “like” notification on one of my pics from this account. A close friend of mine said she thinks this person was scrolling thru my pics and accidentally hit “like” on one of them. I can’t imagine this person being stupid enough to notify me of his existence-although I have to admit it seems like the capacity for stupidity in people, in general, seems to expand exponentially more and more as time goes on. Weren’t we in the midst of the “Information Age?” Seems more like the “Misinformation Age” (or even, at times, the “Disinformation Age”) but I digress…

-So I checked it out and I have to admit, I did feel a little flattered cause I’d seen this happen with celebs and, so far, nothing seemed to be bad-and if this was just a fan page, that’s where it would have ended. I soon discovered, however, that there was more than meets the eye (or even the ear as Peter Sellers would say-bonus no-prize for those who can say what movie that line came from) 🙂 …

-As I mentioned above, two of my friends (both female-and eventually a few more) started following the page and received messages (quickly) by this guy. They all start the same was as follows…

Thanks for commenting and liking my official page. If you are interested in talking to me, you can reach me here. Thanks for your support.

-If you reply (and, so far, all three people who have are women), at some point he will tell them (very early on) how beautiful they are and try to get them to either chat via Google Hangouts and / or download WhatsApp to chat there. I received some screenshots of the conversations and, while I won’t post them to protect the people this guy was targeting, I will transfer some of what he wrote here, in part, cause it’s kind of laughable, unreal and pathetic. In regards to the chats (and I’m not correcting his spelling / phrasing btw)…

“Well you can drop your Gmail to enable me add you up on Hangout where I can reply you easily…Drop your number let me add you on WhatsApp then to enable easy communication…

-And if asked why can’t communications be via Facebook Messenger as before this is the reply…

“…Why my beautiful friend? I just wanna have a private chat with you since I don’t trust the security of this platform…All we need is to be sincere in our communications as good friends OK?”

-“Sincere in our communications…” This guy has some balls LOL. OK, first of all, anyone who knows me knows that I don’t do chats. Way back in the AOL days (circa 1999-2000ish) I did dabble with both AOL messenger and Yahoo messenger for a little bit, but while chatting can be fun, it’s also a huge time sucker and I stopped doing chats a long time ago for that reason so if you ever see me messaging you to chat on some chatting platform, you know it’s a fake. The only thing close is Facebook Messenger and, even then, I barely have time to communicate there. I do my daily Facebook Memories re-posts and post memes and / or quotes (around 4 of those) but that takes about 10-15 minutes to do-then I’m done. In addition, I’ve never used WhatsApp and the only time I ever used Google Hangouts were for some interviews for acting / horror podcast shows (Can you even use Google Hangouts anymore now that Google Plus is dead?). But this gets even better…

-Besides sending “kisses and hugs, muahh!” (to a married woman no less), he also sent these particular gems…

“You must have been the second woman GOD created after eve. Apparently GOD must have lavish abundant time to make such a beautiful lady like you, You look so enchanting, highly like goddess…

Well, I will appreciate being good friend in sincerity, honesty and trust as we can share ideas and discuss about more issues and talk more about ourselves, and as time goes on there may be something great for us in the future…what do you say?”

-Now, I can be cheesy at times, but that’s a whole new level (or 12) right there (HA!). This is pretty whacked seeing all of this-especially under my name and pic. In addition, with all the talking, he really didn’t say anything about himself. He just continued to ask questions and his replies were basically how beautiful she was. After that, my friend asked why this sudden interest after many years and here was the reply…

“I discovered you are my big fan, since I see your likes like on most of my posts…you have nothing to worry about…”

– “After I liked on most of my posts…”-which is a big whopping ONE (!) on Fake-O’s page. Well, I gotta admit, math was never one of my strong point either (but not THAT bad) 🙂 ….

-On top of that, “Romeo” (or is that “Cheezio” (HA!) ) posts a link to some site called Insurance POST – which was his way to prove that his posts were true. Oh, the irony… I’ll get right on clicking that link boyo…always wanted to go phishing-NOT!…*roll eyes*

-Then “Cheezio” changes gears and gets all narcissistic with this next part. I know there are some people that think I’m not only that, but an asshole at times but check this out…

“My father once told me Good things only come to those who wait. And I can see you have long and wished for this day to come.”

-DAMN! (HA!)…I need to use that line in a future script one day (HA!) 🙂 Obviously me (as well as the four people who messaged me about it) reported the page yesterday-and it’s still up (?)… Feel free to report it as well (maybe it will help) but the main thing is letting people know this isn’t me and has nothing to do with myself or my projects. Be careful and don’t let Wannabe Waynos ruin your day 😀

UPDATE (8/15) – Yesterday I found out thru two more female friends who talked to him that “Cheesio” has upgraded from desperately trying to get a woman to chat with him to soliciting outright for money (to the tune of $3,500 (!) ) from them in the form of bit coins. Once again I reported that page, but this time out of the two choices (“this is spam” or “this in inappropriate”) I picked the later, which lead me to 2-3 more questions than the spam one. I just checked later today and the page is now gone (Woo Hoo!) Thanks to all who alerted me to this asshat and reported that page. This probably won’t be the last time something like this happens, but at least this “Wannabe Wayno’s” page was “wiped out” 🙂