Someone Impersonated Me On Facebook – See The Steps I Took To End It

Hello ABBers, how has your day been? Mine has been hectic as usual. Incase you are wondering what I meant by ABBers, it simply connotes Aderonke Bamidele’s Blog Readers. You get the drift now? ok cool. Yesterday, I promised to give you the concluding part of my dramatic weekend today. The concluding part has to do with a guy who decided to create a Fake Facebook account in my name on Facebook using my real name, pictures and personal details. Oyibo dey call am ‘impersonation’ lol

Sometime last year, August 1, 2015 to be specific. A guy who goes by the name Paul Simon Obochi, you can see his picture below

Paul Simon Obochi

This young guy went to Facebook and opened a Facebook account in my name. Saved some of my pictures from google and uploaded it on the profile. He started collecting money from some of my clients/customers under the pretense of being me.

He started the evil act in May and I did not get to know until August. Meaning, he was involved in this dubious act for close to 4 months.

How did I found out eventually? Good question!

Someone called me to inform me about a payment he made for one of my products. I couldn’t confirm the payment and that was when I realized that the payment was not made to me but to someone else. To cut a long story short, I did my investigation and this guy was caught.

I wanted to arrest him but he sent so many people to plead on his behalf including his pastor. Well I forgave him and the chapter was closed.

Just last week Thursday again, Jan 14 to be precised, one of my wonderful students called me and he said ” madam, did you just opened a new Facebook account?” I said no, then he said ” someone just did on Tuesday, 12th Jan and the account currently has over 500 friends. I asked him to send me the link to the FAKE account and he did.

Here is the link to the Fake account

Now, before this culprit can be brought to book, I knew there are certain steps I needed to take and here are the steps I intended to take.

Step 1. I intend to dialogue first and make him hand over the log in details of the Facebook account to me. That was what I did with the first guy( Paul Simon Obochi) and it worked perfectly well. We would just engage in a peaceful conversation after which I would investigate him very well and then arrest him there after.

Step 2. If the first step does not work, I would report the fake account to Facebook and they would remove it completely.

Step 3. If that does not work, I would instruct my guys to hack into the account and get me the log in details. Trust me, if you are real internet guru, this is a very simple task to perform. Now, when they hack into the account, two things would happen.

Facebook would detect a suspicious log in attempt on the account and it would be temporarily locked. When an account is being locked, you will be asked to provide a means of identification so as to confirm the true ownership of the account. Because the account carries my real details, I would submit a means of identification and be able to claim it after which I would log into it and change the log in details.

Now you know my game plan… See how I executed it one after the other

I got to know about this account on Thursday so by Friday, I sent a friend request to the account using my real Facebook account. My plan was that, if he sees my real account, he would realize that I’m already aware of the new account. Thereby putting a stop to all the rubbish he’s been doing. But I was totally wrong!

Do you know that, I even sent him a message on Facebook requesting that he put a stop to the act and hand over the account details to me peacefully.

Guess what he did?

He accepted my request. Ignored my message. Moved to my profile and updated the fake account using the new details he just got from my real Facebook account. You know that, when you become someone’s friend on Facebook, there are some information you can see, so now that he has become my friend, I have actually given him direct access to my personal information, so all he did was to update the fake account to the new information he got from my real Facebook account.

Immediately I realized this, I unfriend him and blocked him instantly. As at this time, he has even added more friends so the account was currently having over 700 friends. Meanwhile, I already communicated with some of the friends he added on the fake account and they promised to help me follow him up on his next line of action. He on the other hand has started posting articles on the fake account as if I was the one. His intention is to give people the impression that the account was truly mine. Are you getting it now?

When I realized this, I knew there was war, so I moved to the second game plan which is to report the account to Facebook. To report an account to Facebook, these are the steps you need to take..

Go to the profile of the account and click on COVER PHOTO. See the illustration below…

When you click on report, it would bring out some options. Select the appropriate option and wait for a feedback from Facebook. Facebook would investigate the matter and give you a response within 24hrs.

I was expecting a feedback from Facebook but I got none and it was taking longer than usual. So I decided to move to the third game plan which is Hacking into the account. I do not advise anyone to do this, it is not legal but because the account is legally mine, I see no sin in this. lol

I was about doing this when I got a notification message on my Facebook account. Alas! They have responded to my request and here is what they sent to me…

My wonderful readers, Facebook investigated the matter and by Saturday, 16th January  the account was taken down. If you check the link again now, it has been removed

That was how God fought the battle for me and won it. If you know anyone experiencing this, feel free to share this information with them. You shouldn’t suffer in silence. Do not allow any idiot to tarnish your image all in the name of social media. If anyone is harassing you on Facebook or impersonating you, simply do what I just did. Report the profile and the culprit would be dealt with accordingly.

This is the concluding part of my dramatic weekend. Hope you had one or two things to learn from it. I’m sure you did! Catch ya later, your one and only Infopreneur Queen.