They say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.
If so, go talk to someone pretend To be you is even crazier. But I have a very good reason for that.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking to someone posing as me on a messaging and social media app called Telegram.
It is one of the most popular of its kind, with over a billion users worldwide. Telegram is known for its looser moderation and massive “channels” you can follow for news and tips on all kinds of topics.
It has also become a notorious breeding ground for fraud.
Criminals take advantage of the app’s anonymity and ability to reach thousands of users at once, using AI bots to spread scams quickly and disappear before they can be shut down.
Many try to gain trust by posing as celebrities, companies and trusted “experts” in their field.
Including, as it turns out, myself.
I was first alerted to Fake Iona by an acquaintance who had been contacted by them and wanted to confirm with me that it was real.
When I looked at them I was not impressed. They got my first name wrong and called me Lona Bain. The profile had simply taken a photo from Instagram and used part of my bio as a personal finance expert.
Talk about little effort!
But it was eerie to see my identity hijacked – and alarming to think that others could be deceived.
So I reported it.
I emailed Telegram via the ‘Report Impersonation’ channel and waited. Weeks passed and nothing happened.
Then I decided to go undercover. I created a dummy profile and messaged Fake Iona directly, feigning interest in her expertise.
Fake Iona fluctuated between short, clunky sentences and articulate, AI-generated paragraphs that urged me to invest in cryptocurrency.
She sent me a link to a company that claims to offer a “wide range of investment options” in cryptocurrency. But after researching them further, I noticed that the outfit had a suspiciously limited online footprint and vague details about how it works.
The alarm bells were deafening.
On the website I found a poorly written prospectus with a bogus certificate of incorporation, despite not being on Companies House, and references to untraceable awards.
The senior management team had no online presence beyond the website and the office claims its headquarters are at an address in South West London, but the only business based there is a luxury wine bar.
Either they like to mix their crypto with their chianti, or this was all illegitimate.
Nevertheless, Fake Iona was persistent and sent me a testimonial video from a random woman, who I’ll call Diane, talking about the $15,000 she made from the company’s services.
She didn’t mention me by name, which indicated the clip was from another scam.
All in all, this exchange lasted several weeks until I confronted Fake Iona and told her that I was the real deal, and the person she was pretending to be. I expected her to disappear, but instead she ranted accusingly me of being the deceiver.
In a surreal conversation, I pointed out that my name was misspelled in her profile. It was Lona instead of Iona.
Back came the reply: ‘Oh, give me a break, ‘Iona with an I’. You can type whatever you want, but that doesn’t make you the real deal.’ Being accused of being fake by someone impersonating me felt like the last straw!
Eventually, a few months after our first interaction, the account disappeared, but only because the scammer deleted it. Telegram never followed up on my reports or responded to my repeated requests for comment. I got my @ionajbain handle back, but it wasn’t thanks to the company.
This isn’t just my problem.
An academic study of more than 120,000 public channels has found widespread fake and cloned accounts that impersonate influencers, crypto companies and even group administrators to promote scams.
And through it all, the victims have lost millions.
Telegram may have added verification badges and reporting tools to stop the rot, but researchers say the counterfeits continue to flourish because enforcement is patchy and takedowns slow.
But it is not limited to Telegram.
Impersonation fraud has become systematic on social media. Criminals now have AI on their side: bots that create endless fake profiles, churn out slick marketing pitches, produce deepfake videos, and mimic the hallmarks of respect used by real influencers.
For regular users, it makes it harder than ever to know who they can really trust online.
My encounter with Fake Iona was ultimately comical, but the experience highlights a broader truth: Social media companies aren’t doing enough to prevent fraudulent accounts from flourishing, nor are they taking responsibility when it leads to disaster.
It feels like they have little incentive to act aggressively – impersonators create traffic; traffic generates advertising revenue.
Until that changes, the imitators will continue to proliferate.
I may have won this particular Telegram battle, but I’m not confident we’ll win the war against shameless copycats like “Lona Bain.”
A Telegram spokesperson told Metro: ‘Creating fraudulent accounts is expressly prohibited by Telegram’s terms of service and such accounts will be banned or flagged with the SCAM or FAKE tags when discovered.
‘Unfortunately, impersonation is possible on any platform. In addition to moderating scam accounts, Telegram offers notable people the ability to verify their channels and groups, letting users know they are who they say they are and ensuring they appear at the top of search results.”
Do you have a story you would like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
MORE: I gained weight because I felt comfortable in my relationship — or so I thought
MORE: Taylor Swift fans ‘terribly disappointed’ over bizarre AI video rumors
MORE: Snapchat Memories Can Be Deleted Unless Users Pay
#confronted #scammer #pretending #doubled