I was recently the victim of a fraud by a cyber criminal acting on Instagram selling fake popular instagram pages at high prices. This person solicited me to buy "ArtsHelpOfficial" for 3100 dollar. ArtsHelpOfficial is a popular art platform featuring art and artists on Instagram. Once I bought it, he renamed it and sells it again and again. I'm publishing this because there might have been many other victims before me and there might be new victims in the future.
ArtsHelpOfficial was the name of the page when the fraud happened but the page has been renamed several times so the link may not open (the page has had different names such as artshelpingpage, artassists, arts assist, artists page, arts official, arts helps, property.gram...). The latest name was @ArtsHelpWorldwide but it will probably change its name again in the future because the admin hacks and resets the name each time it's sold so that he can sell it again and again.
Here is the story: I received an unsolicited message from the admin of this page (Robert Lawley, email: robertlawley21@gmail.com) on the 18th of December 2017, about 1 month ago, in which he proposed me to buy his page for 3100 USD. Being an artist myself, I was interested because it is a popular page (at that time it was about 889K followers). So we started negotiating the price first on Instagram, then on Kik, then on Google Hangout. The admin of this page asked me to do the payment by Western Union to a certain Josiah Mukanganiki in Northern Cyprus, which of course I was reluctant to do! I asked many times for payment guarantees, but he manipulated me and had many good reasons and arguments (he said for instance that he was an interior decorator from the United Kingdom who moved to Turkey/Northern Cyprus and that there is no Paypal in Northern Cyprus/Turkey, etc...), I eventually made the payment because I really wanted the page. Big Mistake!
Once he received my money via his accomplice Josiah Mukanganiki, he gave me the access for about 10 days, then he hacked the page, and renamed it. I received an email alert saying that a person with the email ttss1234@yahoo.com (clearly a hacker's email) had reset the password of the page. I couldn't log in to the page anymore. After it got hacked, I noticed the email of the previous owner of the page (robertlawley21@gmail.com) was still in the info section of the page so I realized that the guy fooled me, he didn't respect our agreement, he stole the money and hacked the page!
I was quite upset, so I contacted him asking what had happened. That's were the story becomes even more crazy... He told me that his friends working at Facebook/Instagram in California (named "Michael" with the following number: 0015618995416) could help put my email back to the page as the main owner, of course against a new payment, which of course I was not going to do this time! This was clearly another corruption if it was true. Out of curiosity I called Michael and asked him what happened. The guy confirmed he was working for Facebook and that he could put my name back against payment.
Of course this is fake and this was another cyber criminal (or maybe the same guy?!) I already filed a complaint to the police and cyber criminality services in my country and other countries against Robert Lawley and Josiah Mukanganiki. I'll also file a complaint at Europol and Interpol services.
