In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling TikTok when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business in Ohio. But the video Yelichek was seeing was not from Tsaftarides’ actual page, which has nearly 41,000 followers – but instead originated from a profile of someone claiming to be a “sad old man” whose cat sanctuary was at risk of shutting down.
“Please stay 8 seconds so I don’t have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into,” the text on the video said, adding that the sanctuary would be selling slippers to raise additional funds. The bid for sympathy worked on many viewers, garnering millions of views and tens of thousands of users leaving concerned comments. “Just ordered two! Sending love to these kittens,” wrote one. Another commenter said: “thank you for all you do for these babies.” Others even asked if there was a GoFundMe link to donate directly to the cat shelter.
Yelichek and her father were shocked. Tsaftarides does not run a shelter. The account posting the plea for funds appears to be a front for a scheme seeking to sell mass-produced slippers. Several of Tsaftarides’ followers who actually ordered slippers complained that the fuzzy footwear came with “made in China” tags and did not, in fact, appear to be handmade by an elderly man with a struggling cat sanctuary.
“These people are using my identity to make money and I don’t understand why,” Tsaftarides said. “It’s thieving, it’s stealing, and it’s not right.”
Tsaftarides is not the only TikTok user who has had his likeness hijacked by such accounts. Charles Ray, an 85-year-old retiree based in Michigan, has also been targeted by accounts using doctored videos of his likeness. He started his actual TikTok account in January and uses it to share jokes with his followers.
“Earlier this year, my pastor told me a joke about a frog, and I thought, ‘that ought to make people smile,’ so I figured out how to make an account and told the joke, and it took off from there,” he said.
Ray’s videos all follow a similar template: filmed in selfie mode, he tells a short joke. He was frustrated to learn his content, which he makes only to “share joy” and not to earn money, was being lifted and edited to scam people. In one video, Ray is rubbing his eye, and the repost seems to imply he is crying. Another video uses a clip from a woman crying on TikTok about an unrelated issue, and another includes a user in a hospital bed.
Since she first discovered the proliferation and manipulation of her father’s face, Yelichek has identified more than 100 accounts splicing his videos with other, unrelated users to sell mass-produced goods including slippers, headphone cases and blankets – all under the guise of independent sellers that need help. Some two dozen Instagram accounts and YouTube as well as a handful were pulling the same trick, according to a list compiled by Yelichek and a review of the accounts by the Guardian.
At one point, Yelichek even made contact with the account manipulating her father’s likeness over direct message and pleaded with its owner to stop. The person behind the account claimed to be a poor 17-year-old boy based in Greece trying to make money for his family.
“I totally understand your situation but I also want you to understand mine,” he said, proceeding to post more stolen videos.
The con replicates a recurring genre of video on TikTok that has boosted sales for some small businesses: user makes a heartfelt post about a local store or restaurant that is struggling, and online followers are moved to support it. One typical post mimicking a local plea for help reads: “Please just stay 15 seconds to save my pawpaw’s slipper small business.”
In the case of videos Yelichek is seeing, many commenters who are moved by the fake story try to boost it by commenting names of celebrities and creating other engagement they believe TikTok prioritizes. “Fun fact,” a comment on one video of the type reads, this one using the same formula but claiming to be a struggling cow sanctuary. “Liking and replying to comments boosts more! Referencing popular things like Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift puts this video on the [for you page] of more people.” The video pulled in 1.4m likes and 26,000 comments before being taken down. Yelichek says these accounts lift videos from other TikTok users as well and recontextualize them to create a false narrative.
Tsaftarides said his content being used to sell mass-produced goods is particularly frustrating, as he started his account to promote small businesses, including his own, and to encourage people to shop locally.
“All we want to do is show people our store and teach them about sewing,” he said. “We don’t make money off of our TikTok account.”
Yelichek said she and her father filed a police report to Jackson township police in Ohio, where their store is based, for identity theft and have made great efforts to get social networks to take the stolen content down – often to no avail. Yelichek said that while Instagram has removed a few of the profiles she reported, TikTok – the platform where the issue is more widespread – has been less responsive.
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“If we comment on [these videos] saying they’re spam, our comments often get deleted right away, with TikTok saying it’s against their community guidelines,” Yelichek said, sharing screenshots of the messages. “They’ve actually put strikes on my dad’s account for me commenting on these videos to say that they are spam and scamming people.”
TikTok users who have gotten wise to the scheme have commented on videos calling out the scam. Like Yelichek, some comments say that TikTok responds to their reports of a video by saying it does not violate its community guidelines.
TikTok said in a statement that its community guidelines do, in fact, prohibit impersonation accounts and content that violates others’ intellectual property rights. Reports of copyright infringement concerns may require proof of ownership, including links to the original content and links to infringing content. Meta similarly stated its Instagram terms of use do not allow posting content that violates someone else’s intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademarks, and that violations can be reported on Instagram’s help page.
Ray, the 85-year-old jokester, said he tried reporting the videos to TikTok but got responses that the content he had flagged did not violate TikTok’s community standards. Like Yelichek, he said his comments on the videos alerting followers to the scam were frequently removed, and that he gets “no help from TikTok” and does not know how to further communicate with the company.
TikTok said in a statement that it continuously takes action against such copyright violations. It added that 94% of all content removed for violating community guidelines on fake engagement in the fourth quarter of last year was removed proactively rather than in response to reports.
Meanwhile, some users are catching on to this particular kind of sadness bait – with recent videos going viral alerting people to the fact that the posts begging for help with failing cat shelters, cow farms and other heart-wrenching fictions are not real.
Though awareness may spread, the impersonating videos remain available. In lieu of takedowns, Ray said he has decided to continue to make his videos because many of his 13,000 followers have told him they look forward to his posts each day.
“With everything that’s going on nowadays, people need to smile,” he said. “If my followers smile, even for a minute, they’ve forgotten their troubles for a minute. So that’s all I try to do – to make people smile. This is not going to stop me.”