WL INVESTIGATES: MY SOCIAL MEDIA IDENTITY THEFT

Ok so yesterday Aaron gets in touch with me and basically said that he stumbled across an instagram account that was pretending to me. It had photos from all over the place, loads of pictures I had never even seen, collected from facebook, wicked-land, other peoples instagrams, other peoples facebooks, etc etc.

PART 1 - INSTAGRAMAZING

The account soon went to private after I posted about it and people started interacting with it, but here are a couple of screengrabs I got before it went private. The whole account was under the name 'Joe Thomas', but as Kurlton Banks.

Among photos old and new, there were a bunch of photoshopped pictures, some really convincingly done, with me holding my 'little brother'. its only when you look at my hair in the top right corner of this one you can see its not real. also, there were photos of a Kirsty, my friend blakes girlfriend, calling her 'Dani', this was a fake girlfriend that had been created for me.

more of me with the 'lil man'

me and darryl at the races. through the captions and comments on the instagram pictures whoever made this was creating a fake life for me where me and darryl tour around doing mental things.

they even faked text conversations between me and bradley.

here are some pictures from the instagram account that I sent to darryl. sorry for the pixelation, they were just photos taken on my phone, but I hope you can read the captions on them. loads of the pictures had photos of black cats, calling them sauce, as if they were pictures of darryls cat, the recurring little brother Liam, and Max's cat Lenny.

on this one that is max's actual cat photoshopped into the foreground, and my head put on another body. check it out, they even used the same head on a body below.

same again, more photoshop work, really convincingly done with a black staffordshire bull terrier, calling him Alfie, the name of my mums dog. whoever had done this had put in a serious amount of time and effort!

if you scrolled far enough down the instagram it suddenly turned into this normal lad, posting absolutely loads of photos of him smoking weed. It was somebodies actual account that they gave up to turn into a parody account of me haha.

PART 2 - SOCIAL MEDIA GROUNDWORK

so from the instagram there was a link to his twitter, with a similar sort of idea, again using the name 'Joe Thomas' but pretending to be me, as Kurlton Banks. the twitter account had only been active since november 2012.

after following the link in his twitter bio, people started to post links on my facebook status of his facebook profile, basically the same thing as the twitter, Joe Thomas, as me, as Kurlton Banks. Annoyingly I had been blocked so I couldn't have a look through it, but people were posting screengrabs.

The profile picture here was literally posted on that day to the religion page, a night out in Leicester, from tuesday night. it was clear it was a comprehensive ongoing effort.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. Bradley found from that one profile's mutual friends a bunch of fake profiles with slightly different names to me and my group of friends. there was one for Danielle, the fake girlfriend. her photos were a combination of Kirsty, Valena and Jess Reed. Also, fake profiles for Bradley, Frank, Jamie, Max, Darryl and Rose and Kama.

All of these profiles had fake photo albums, of photos from various peoples facebooks, with everyone tagged in each others photos. Albums of photos had been pulled from facebook and wicked-land and reposted, complete with comments and likes dating back to around september / october time.

I got this screencap from Darryls yesterday. He messaged facebook and got his fake profile removed, but here is an example of how the profiles interacted. Im guessing between these comments from darryl there were comments from my Joe Thomas (me) profile, but because I was blocked they were not showing.

PART 3 - JADE MOORE

more or less simultaneously, yesterday evening Aaron and Jamie both realised this Jade Moore was something to do with it. Aaron said he went onto the instagram that was posing as me, and looked through the followers, and this girl was on there. He said he seen that me and bradley were friends with her on FB. When Jamie started looking around these fake profiles he saw the odd photo from an album of party photos Jade uploaded a while back, and remembered that she had sent me and Bradley friend requests. I cast my mind back and she sent me a friend request a while ago. I remembered us wondering who she was. I accepted it, assuming she listened to my music, or read my blog or whatever.

I had a look on her profile and it dawned on me that she was the one collecting the photographs and posting them from the fake profiles. She was friends with a few of my immediate circle, but as well as Kirsty and Rose, two people who had fake profiles also, but were from complete different ends of my social spectrum. She must have been watching my status yesterday when it was all getting discovered and coming out.

does anybody recognise her? Have you met her? Originally she is from Colwyn Bay in north wales, But a couple of statuses on her wall lead me to believe she has moved away, maybe to Leicester. After I posted on facebook about the profiles and what not, and we had basically figured she was something to do with it she removed her hometown information from her profile at some point this morning.

Her name was fresh in my mind because I got a notification on the wicked-land facebook fanpage that she had liked it, and when I clicked her profile she had liked that, a Kurly Hypa fanpage, Boy Kid Clouds fanpage, the company I work for, the Religion photographers fanpage, an event darryl has creates fanpage and Darryls musical alter ego's fanpage all in one day. Clearly broadening her sources to collect photos and information.

This is where it starts to go mental though. going through her photos you can find that she is friends with the actual Joe Thomas, Presumably the real guy before his profile got switched over to me. she had photos tagged in with him, and the some other random guy, tagged in as Max Bailey, the fake Max Barton.

these are the same people that were in the pictures right back to the start of Joe Thomas's instagram, before he switched it to me. There is a whole group of young lads who Jade is in pictures with whose profiles list them as being from Colwyn Bay. wether they are a real group of people with real lives, or another circle of fake profiles, much like ours are we do not know. Jamie believes the latter.

PART 4 - DOM JONES AND RICKY JAMES RUSSELL

On the fake profile for Rose there was one lad who kept popping up, liking and commenting on pictures. I had a little snoop around this guys profile and he too was from Colwyn Bay, but was in pictures with a guy I know from Leicester. He was mutual friends with all the other lads who were pictured in Jades albums (the photos where Joe Thomas and Max Bailey were tagged in) and mutual friends with all of the fake profiles. wether he is related to Jade Moore and they are doing it together, or they just know each other from back home and happen to both have knocked around Leicester at some point I do not know, but his knowledge and contribution to the situation is undeniable.

This is the photo of him with a guy called Ricky James Russell. On both of their profiles they have a load of photos together, it's not like a one time meeting. I know for a fact this Ricky guy has lived here for a long time, if not all of his life, which would lead me to believe that Dom also resides in Leicester these days as the dates on these photos were relatively recent. Ricky is one of those people I know of, but dont actually know.

Me and Ricky have a lot of mutual friends, and im pretty sure he would be aware that I exist.

if you do want to enjoy Ricky's personality, here it is in all it's glory.

PART FIVE - THE WHOPPER

up until around 3 oclock this afternoon speculation still surrounded wether Jade Moore had ever been to leicester or wether it was just a chance encounter over the internet. Rose messaged me with a screengrab of her profile asking if that was the one I meant. Rose said she went school with her, Jade came to Rose's school from years 7 until 9, and left because she was always getting bullied and what not. Wether she is still in Leicester Rose doesn't know, but doubts it, as she had not seen or heard of her since she left, in year 9.

In conclusion Jade Moore definitely has lived in Leicester, and it would not be mental to think we might have crossed paths at some point before. Im guessing that Dom guy is involved, simply because he is all over the accounts, mutual friends with all the lads from Colwyn Bay and all of the fake accounts. I think Jade is the kingpin, and definitely organised the whole thing as she has the appropriate people added on facebook, but she is quite clearly not the only one who knows all about it, and possibly uses the profiles. I think its high time we got some answers out of Jade Moore, I'll be tagging her in the facebook post to bring our conclusions to her attention.

DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND THAT THIS IS 'CASE CLOSED', I'LL BRING YOU THE LATEST AS IT UNFOLDS.