Edited by: TJVNews.com
A Long Island dad had his social media photos stolen and catfished on a scam to swindle men on gay dating app, Grindr.
As reported by the NY Post, a straight physiotherapist had his shirtless photos taken from his Instagram account and used without his consent or knowledge to lure gay men into a money trap. Dr. Scott Liptzin, who lives in Hicksville, NY, with his wife and three children, posted some fit photos of himself to promote his physical therapy business and garner new clients. Some of those photos, recently ended up in the wrong hands with a scammer using the images to sell X-rated massages, which won’t actually take place. A Grindr user known as “Cams” used the personal pics to advertise “body-to-body naked” services, including “rimming, edging and penetration,” to gay men in a scam where money is collected but no services are ever rendered. “It gets me upset that somebody is copying my material for the wrong reasons,” Liptzin, 40, told Vice, of the scam unwittingly using pictures from his “Savage Physio Doc” Insta account.
“Cams” posed as the muscular physiotherapist from the photo, “asked them to enter their credit card details on a different website to prepay for a massage that never happens.” He was charging Grindr users $50 for a 30-minute massage session, $80 for an hour, and $100 for 90 minutes. It isn’t known how many men paid for the scam, which promised a “happy ending”.
Grindr issued a statement, saying that they “take the privacy and safety of our users extremely seriously. We encourage our users to report improper or illegal behavior either within the app or directly via email . . . and to report criminal allegations to local authorities.”
Notwithstanding, the physiotherapist said he knows about seven more fake accounts all using his shirtless photos to advertised erotic massages. Some of those accounts appeared on Instagram, and boasted thousands of followers. “It’s crazy,” Liptzin told Vice. “Instagram needs to get a better handle on all of the fake bots. It’s just got so out of control that it’s beyond anything they could do or care about at this point.” Liptzin said that despite this disheartening twist, he won’t stop sharing his shirtless pictures on social media, saying he won’t let scammers rule. “A lot of my clients have come through the massage work content I post. That’s how I create a lot of business,” he said. “It obviously works.”
Instagram’s parent company, Meta, commented to say that they have “systems in place that help us catch and remove suspicious activity before it is reported.” The company claims that in just the first three months of 2022, they “actioned 1.6 billion fake accounts” that were mostly found thanks to artificial-intelligence programs.
Despite such attempts by the social media giant to close fake accounts, online fraud is still flourishing, with tens of thousands of users being scammed by users pretending to be someone they aren’t.