Someone Was Impersonating Me: Here’s What Happened

My Story

This morning, around 8:00 am, as I was getting my kids off to school, I got a text message from my good friend Nolan. She is a vintage dealer up in Atlanta and has some pretty good connections up there. Earlier in the morning, another dealer (who is in a large collectibles Facebook Group) reached out to her in regards to a Facebook post that mentioned a person by my name, Emily Baker.

A member in that collectibles Facebook Group posted that an “Emily Baker” had sold a VERY LARGE and EXPENSIVE vintage collectible item and that he had not received it yet in the mail nor was he given any tracking, etc. He went onto say in the post that he could no longer find “Emily Baker” in messenger and that he felt he had been scammed. He asked if anyone knew “Emily Baker” and he went on to post a profile picture of “Emily Baker” in the group …. sure enough it was a picture of me. Not only that, the profile picture also had Pops in it as well. This scammer used the picture of me and my dad standing in the entranceway to his barn that I posted a summer or two ago. The scammer must have lifted it off of my IG account. He also used my Instagram BIO information – that was frustrating to see.

Upon discovering this, I was hit with a wave of emotions: anger, sadness, disbelief, worry …. but mainly sorrow for the poor soul who sent $650 via Venmo to this fake account for an expensive item that probably does not even exist. I was also very concerned that my name and MY FACE (and Pops) was used to create a fake account/posting in this Facebook group. AND that now I could somehow be associated with stealing or fraudulent activity. I was (and still am) shaking about that – because my character is worth more to me than any amount of money.

As soon as I gathered myself and my emotions, I dug into Facebook (I am not really active on there) and was able to find the fake account (with my photo – grrr) and report it as a fake account. I then asked my friend Nolan to share within the Collectibles Facebook group that I – the real Emily Baker behind the picture – was in no way involved with this horrible situation at all. I also asked her to please invite the members in that group to please report the fake account as well.

Those of you who know me and follow me on Instagram know that I do NOT sell online (shipping stinks – and the item this man paid for is HUGE …..NO THANKS). Also, everything I do is under My Weathered Home, I don’t really post anything under my personal account. I did take a moment to check out the fake profile and it looks as if the account was started in late February of this year, so it is only a few weeks old. Also, the posts looked to be mainly ‘shared’ posts – nothing personal at all. Although the FaceBook account hasn’t been active for a while, it still gave me an uneasy feeling when I was looking at it.

Just A Reminder

It can be difficult to trust online buyers in this day and age. For that reason, let me share with you a few of the things that I would recommend you do before sending anyone any money:

• If you are buying through a person you meet on Facebook, spend some time looking through the account to see if it has been active for a long period of time or if was just recently started. Ask yourself if the content they share looks/feel legitimate.
• If you are buying from an online selling platform, look at their star ratings. Platforms like Ebay, Etsy, etc… all have seller ratings that can help you gauge if the seller will be pleasant to work with. Also, look at the number of transactions that the seller has and take a moment to read any reviews.
• Remember that if you do NOT know a seller personally, I would recommend you use a payment method that offers some sort of recourse if you do indeed get scammed – such as using a credit card or PayPal Goods & Services.
• And remember – if an online ‘deal’ looks too good to be true – then it probably is.

Wrap Up

While my intuition (and maybe yours) is to trust people, we must remember that NOT everyone is deserving of your trust. It makes me so sad that someone would take advantage of another person in this way and I shared this story today in hopes that it will remind you to continue to be vigilant as you are buying online. I do not want this to happen to anyone else – especially to those who are part of my Instagram and Blog family.