Reese Witherspoon warned fans after she discovered a viral scam trend of people impersonating her. The Legally Blonde actress posted a video on her official social platforms explaining the issue.
According to Witherspoon, several people impersonated her on TikTok and Instagram. These accounts allegedly sent private messages to her fans, and some attempted to extort money from them.
Reese Witherspoon urges fans to ignore scammers on social media
"I want to just tell you what I’ve been dealing with for the past 24 hours," Witherspoon said in the video. "There are multiple people on TikTok and Instagram impersonating me."
"And they go into people's DMs and they try to build a relationship, they try to extract personal information, plan meet up times," she noted. Witherspoon stressed that none of those accounts belonged to her, while acknowledging how convincing the messages could appear.
"I want you to know this is not me," she said. "And it’s so upsetting that people would use my name to manipulate people, but I want you to know that I would never, ever manipulate you."
She continued by listing what she would never do and asked fans to treat any such request as a red flag. "I would never reach out to you for money, for private information to create a meet-up time."
Additionally, Witherspoon urged followers to double-check account verification. She warned people not to share details with anyone claiming to be her. "So please look at these accounts that are doing this and make sure they're verified. If somebody's talking to you, this is not just me," she cautioned.
"This is happening across the board. But it's really upsetting to me that this is happening on such a large scale. So please be careful out there, and please know I would never, never reach out to you to manipulate you or take anything from you. Okay?"
Fans react
Fans were upset that Witherspoon had to deal with impersonators and offered her support in the comments.
"Please know that is too common I never want to be afraid of communication! It’s the world we live in now unfortunately most of know that you are such a good person," one fan wrote.
Another said, "Your not kidding it it is so upsetting incredibly hurtful."
"I've had this happen multiple times. People posing as celebrities and sending dms I never message back. I usually always check for the verification too," wrote a third TikToker.
Other people in the comments made light of the situation, with folks joking that their dinner dates with the actress were now canceled.
There were also many folks calling out the social media platforms for not being more proactive about impersonation and scam accounts. They said the burden shouldn't be on the person being impersonated.
"I’ve been reporting accounts left and right that are impersonating other creators/celebrities and TikTok does nothing about it," noted one TikToker. "Some of these fake accounts have thousands of followers! It’s crazy!!"
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