When scammers stole my Instagram, they even took pictures of my kids

It started as a trickle and soon became a flood. One recent Sunday, friend after follower began messaging me one thing: my professional Instagram account had been hacked. As it turns out, not hacked so much as cloned and maliciously corrupted.

The scammers were one by one inviting my followers to a shadow, shady account that was wall-to-wall pictures and videos of me. My pastimes, my friends, even my kids (thank goodness I have always obscured their faces on social media).

Fake Instagram accounts pretending to be Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon.

That account, by the “Financial world’s 1st Female Trader Educator”, was pushing an expensive crypto trading system that presumably does not exist.

My image was not alongside measured – and free – money tips, as it is on my genuine account, but with captions like: You cannot save time for future use. But you can invest it for future you.”

This one hit particularly hard as it was with a poignant picture of me celebrating getting the all-clear from breast cancer.

And “Every successful entrepreneur you see today invested.” On a happy snap with my mum.

Some so-called finfluencers could more accurately be called spin-fluencers: they are pushing a barrel for their own profit, not yours.

“Nothing comes before family.” That sentiment accompanied a selfie with my buddy and fellow financial literacy campaigner Paul Clitheroe – and to be clear, we are not related.

Other captions: “I’m committed to developing an army of capable and knowledgeable individuals.” “On autopilot… he didn’t lift a finger for this.” “It’s never too late to start trading bitcoin.”

The elaborate fake account was aspiration and motivation, interspersed with get-rich-quick hard sell. And the disturbing part was that, apart from the name, it looked like it was from a trusted source: me.

So, it’s doubly disturbing that Australians aged between 18 and 34 are now around twice as likely to source financial advice from social media than are those aged between 35 and 49, says new research from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.

Even in that older cohort, social media is the second most common source of financial advice, after friends and family. Last week, I had a one on one with ASFA chief executive Mary Delahunty about the dangers.

“We’ve got the 18 to 34-year-olds listening to finfluencers, potentially, on social media quite a lot. It’s quite an alarming statistic when you think about how much money these people will have saved in their superannuation accounts that could be influenced by people with not their best interests at heart,” Delahunty said.

“We know that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be a victim of cybercrime and scams.”

Besides basic high pressure marketing tactics on social media platforms, Delahunty says that when it comes to superannuation, there are two big scams. Both involve criminals posing as experts or advisers in as plausible a way as possible. Sound familiar?

The first strategy is to spruik self-managed super funds. They roll your money out of your fund, and then it’s gone. The second ploy is to offer early withdrawal of super, which in reality is possible only in very limited circumstances. And ditto with your dollars.

Whether frauds skim the base content from legit social media pages, as they did with mine, or build it from scratch, you’re talking about accounts set up with the explicit purpose of defrauding people. So how can you check what you see on social media?

Test 1: Make sure the account you are following is not a fake. Mine, under my own name, @nicolepedmckmoney, is verified with a blue tick that proves it is operated by who it says it is. The impostor account was not.

Test 2: Make sure the people you’re listening to are qualified to tell you what they’re telling you. Give it an independent Google rather than relying on their bio as written.

Test 3: Think about the monetisation model of the account. Because, as Delahunty says: “Anything that people hear on social media needs to be filtered through an understanding of what could be the motivation for the person saying that information.”

My real account is simply a behind the scenes of my life and health journey, video snippets of my TV and radio appearances, and columns like these, for which I have already been paid. There is never any charge to followers.

So, what happened with my skimmed account? Nothing. Many, many followers and I – remember, the owner of a verified account – reported it to Instagram. I never heard back.

Meanwhile, I kept messaging the scammers that “I was ‘on to them’“… and screenshotting, tagging, sharing and shaming them from my genuine account.

They just kept blocking me, ‘shutting’ that account and I would swiftly get word from another follower that it had popped up with a new name. It may still be out there.

Some so-called finfluencers could more accurately be called spin-fluencers: they are cynically pushing a barrel for their own profit, not yours. But be on high alert for full fraudsters targeting you, by using known financial commentators, like me.

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is the author of How to Get Mortgage-Free Like Me, available at www.nicolessmartmoney.com. Follow Nicole on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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