A soldier claims his life has been turned upside down repeatedly as scammers keep stealing his photos and videos and setting up fake social media profiles to con unsuspecting women out of money
For the last two years, Farren Morgan has had his inbox bombarded daily with messages from women claiming to be dating him – or to have been scammed by him, with one woman losing £3,000.
The 36-year-old, who lives in Westminster, is happily married and hasn’t been unfaithful to his wife despite what these strangers online may think.
Since 2020, the soldier claims his photos have been taken and used by scammers on Instagram and Facebook and it’s only been getting worse lately.
Speaking to The Mirror, Farren who also runs a fitness coaching business, explained how the pictures and videos he posts for work are being stolen and used to catfish unsuspecting people.
He said: “The scams and stuff that are going on have been going on since 2020, but it’s got a hell of a lot worse recently.
“So the scammers, first of all, started using my pictures, messaging mainly women, saying I’m in another country and asking them to send money for phone cards and flights and things like that.
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“I think with the number of videos and images I post on my profile, they easily have a catalogue of stuff to send to get a sense of me as a person daily and say, ‘Oh, good morning, this is me today at work or this is me doing this’. So they can easily manifest a relationship with someone.
“Having all these images with my top off as well and what have you, I’m not the worst looking lad in the world. I mean I’m in the military, I’ve got nice things and I’m very approachable. I think these are a goldmine for people like that.
“I only found out about it because people started messaging me to say they’d been added by a new profile with my picture, but it had a slightly different name.”
After realising there was a problem, Farren searched his own name on Facebook and Instagram for the first time and couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw numerous accounts pop up.
He started reporting all the accounts for impersonating him and blocked them so they couldn’t steal any more of his posts.
But soon his own account was removed by Instagram – as some of the people being scammed mistook him for a catfish and reported his page.
This happened twice and not having an account proved to be a major blow to his business as it took weeks to get back up and running.
“After about four weeks, I received an email from Instagram saying please take a picture of yourself with this code and email. So I took the picture with the code and had my account back within two hours. But that was like five weeks later.
“Luckily I had a personal account, which I was trying to use to speak to people to let them know that my account had been closed because they were still speaking to the fake profiles thinking that was me. So that was stressful because they had a way of getting in with them.
“A lot of it was to trust you know, being in the military integrity is a massive thing to me and I’m really a trustworthy person. And with that happening, I kept thinking people actually don’t know who I am.
“That was quite scary because anyone could have said anything to anybody and they would have believed it was me.
“I thought about giving it all up and not running the business anymore because of how stressed out I was.”
But Farren decided not to give in and instead started to be more careful and thorough when it came to Instagram.
Since then he has spent an hour of each day combing through to find the fake accounts and block and report them. Just this week alone he has found 72 more profiles.
But he says the hardest part of it all is the messages he gets daily from people all over the world – and one person has even messaged his wife, claiming she was having an affair with Farren.
“The worst thing about it is I get these emails and I get these messages daily from women.
“Once I started talking to these people, they thought that they could then build a relationship with me. And I’m like, well I’m not actually looking for a friendship or a relationship, I’m just letting you know I’m not this person.
“There’s one lady that got scammed out of £3,000 for flights. That was Bitcoin.
“They mainly ask for little things, to send a little bit of money here a little bit of money there to pay the bills or groceries or phone cards. I don’t know who uses phone cards these days, but they’re just getting that money. There are loads of different scams going on.
“As well as the £3,000 it’s normally small amounts from the people I’ve spoken to, anywhere from 10 to £100.”
As well as using his likeness, the scammers have also taken a picture of his baby boy as part of their cons which really upset the dad.
“I literally lost it when they posted a picture of me and my son when he was a baby,” he admits.
“I just thought ‘Wow’ like how low could you actually go to post a picture of an actual baby just to try and get yourself some money.
“I’m probably never going to post a picture of my son on my social media again. People can use that, go back and take a screenshot and use that.”
Farren has since warned other people to be vigilant about what they post on their own accounts, urging those who run a business to consider looking themselves up on social media to see if they’re being catfished as well.
“From my experience and what’s happened to me, I’d definitely say you have to be very wary if you’re public. Just make sure if you are running a business or you are susceptible to scams or anything like that, make sure that you always have a quick search of your name. So make sure there aren’t other profiles that pop up with your profile picture.
“If there is just make sure to follow the correct chain of report and block.
“I’m just one person, there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who are in exactly the same boat as me.
“I really wish that I looked around earlier and had a look at my name in hindsight.”
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