Sometimes, being a fan gives you a lot: happiness, joy, a sense of community. And sometimes, it’s just really bad.
Here’s a cautionary tale for you: A Stranger Things A fan named McKala claims she was duped by an online scammer who tricked her into thinking he was actor Dacre Montgomery, who plays Billy on the show Celebrity TV.
As she explains in a YouTube video (which you can see below), the scammer said she had to send him money to break up with her own boyfriend (the real Montgomery is in a relationship with the model Liv Pollock). The woman says she eventually sent $10,000 to the person she believed to be in Montgomery.
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McKala, who is a single mother from Kentucky, said that she went into an artist forum, where someone started chatting with her, and then said it was Montgomery. She says the scammer gained her trust by asking her to tune in Stranger Things for a special program the night before the character Billy returned and she wrote poetry as Montgomery had previously published. As for why a working actor in Hollywood would need money, the scammer told McKala that his finances were controlled by his girlfriend, who had their own money in a joint account. The victim of this scam eventually divorced her husband amid all the deception. (Experts call it a “romance scam.”)
A word to the wise: If someone sends you private messages and claims to be someone famous, under no circumstances believe them. I don’t know of a documented example of an actor from a popular Netflix series actually asking for $10,000 from a fan – but I do know of many examples of this type of behavior from scammers. A few years ago a fan at a WWE event jumped the guardrail and attacked wrestler Seth Rollins, apparently because a scammer had given that fan an ID he Rollins, and then had him send him hundreds of dollars in gift cards. (Why would anyone think that Seth Rollins, who makes millions of dollars a year and is married to another WWE superstar too (making millions of dollars, I’d need a gift card for a hundred or two away from me, but that’s neither here nor there.)
You can check out the whole story at the Stranger Things catfishing scam below. Stranger Things It is expected to return for a fifth and final season on Netflix sometime in the next few years.
