After discovering scammers impersonating her on social media, Reese Witherspoon has urged fans not to engage with any accounts claiming to be her. The 49-year-old actress revealed she has endured a tough 24 hours after uncovering a number of catfishing scams on Instagram and TikTok, in which fraudsters have been using her name and image to “build relationships” online.
Now, the actress has told her followers to be wary about interacting with accounts that claim to be run by her online.
In a post on TikTok, the Legally Blonde star said, “Hey, this is important. I want to just tell you what I've been dealing with for the past 24 hours.
“There are multiple people on TikTok and Instagram impersonating me, and they go into people's DMs, and they try to build a relationship, they try to extract personal information, plan meet-up times."
“I want you to know, this is not me. And it's so upsetting that people would use my name to manipulate people, but I want you to know that I would never, ever manipulate you. I would never reach out to you for money, for private information, to create a meet up time.”
Reese added she would never try to “manipulate” her fans or “take anything” from them, and urged everyone to be careful about who they trust online.
The Morning Show actress said, “So please look at these accounts that are doing this, and make sure they're verified. If somebody's talking to you, this is not just me. This is happening across the board, but it's really upsetting to me that this is happening on such a large scale. So please be careful out there, and please know, I would never, never reach out to you to manipulate you or take anything from you, okay.”
Reese is the latest celebrity to warn fans about the issue of online scammers, as last year, Dame Helen Mirren.
In a post on Instagram, the 80-year-old actress explained: “SCAM ALERT! Person(s) unknown have used my name to front a false charity, which is sending out messages from me, offering a large sum of money and asking you to respond to helenmirrencharity@gmail.com."
Mirren continued, "THIS IS NOT ME, and it is not my email address. Please beware and do not respond; this is a scam.The original message came from drogogo91@gmail.com and referred to a genuine charity, Look For The Stars, to claim authenticity. Please keep alert - Many thanks, Helen.”