Irish star Daniel O’Donnell has pleaded with fans to keep their guards up as it has emerged a scammer has been using his name to extract money from them.
Fraudsters have been contacting O’Donnell’s fans on social media pretending to be the singer or a member of his staff.
Initiating contact in this way is a tactic used to lure in an unsuspecting victim before hitting them with an elaborate reason to send them cash.
In this case, O’Donnell and his team don’t know what the second half of the scam would have entailed, and they don’t want his fans to have to find out the hard way.
O’Donnell uploaded a video to his Facebook page to address the issue directly.
He said: “Many of you are getting messages asking you to message back either to me or to somebody in our office.
“I just want you to know that the Facebook page is only ever used to put up messages or videos and we never ask you to message us back.
“We don’t ever message anybody directly or ask you to private message us back.
“Please don’t message anybody back as these people are only trying to take advantage of people. I don’t know whether they can extract money but it’s certainly not us so don’t answer any message like that.
“We really appreciate the fact that you write on the page, but don’t ever think that we will private message you back to get you to answer us.
“I hope this is clear and I hope that none of you have experienced anything derogatory or disrespectful.
“Please take it from me that we are not messaging anybody.”
Thankfully they were on the ball quickly enough to notice that fans were being contacted by the fraudsters before anyone handed over any of their cash.
It’s great to see that O’Donnell reacted quickly and produced a video of his warning so that fans could see that it is coming from him.
It’s a reminder that fans of O’Donnell or any public figure must keep their wits about them as there are plenty of unscrupulous people willing to use social media to lie to them and take advantage of them.
Take a look at O’Donnell’s message below.
