The other day, we told you about the #SaveMayowa campaign down in Nigeria which is causing quite a stir in both papers and communities. Now, YNaija reports that popular ‘Nollywood‘ actress Toyin Aimakhu says she was conned into promoting the allegedly fraudulent GoFundMe campaign which raised over $100,000. That campaign is now under investigation by local police.
In an exclusive interview done on the spot at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, the actress tells YNaija just how the family fooled her into promoting the campaign:
“They tagged me, she sent a message to me… they said she’s my huge fan saying she had cancer and she needed help and wanted me to come… I showed the doctor the (medical) report and the doctor said ‘which report?’. They said it was a fake report.”
Note: Aimakhu boasts nearly 750k Instagram followers, and several Facebook pages in her honor. Clearly, she has a large network of fans, one which could easily be manipulated by, say, an unscrupulous scammer pretending to have cancer.
Aimakhu says that the entire #SaveMayowa campaign to benefit Mayowa Ahmed is an elaborate scam cooked up by Ahmed’s family.
The family happened to be at Lagos University Teaching Hospital on Sunday, though Aimakhu said they only did so to lend credibility to their cancer claim amidst the developing investigation into its legitimacy.
“They just came up with the plan on Sunday. They now came to LUTH to appear as if they were in LUTH. When they saw me they said I did not help them to beg for money… that they don’t know anything.”
Now, although this happened in Nigeria it’s worth reporting here because you can see just how easily a famous person was duped into spreading the allegedly fake campaign. Without her help, it may have never taken off like it did.
So pay attention actresses, baseball players, authors, and even popular YouTubers: scammers will try anything to distribute their phony campaigns to the uninformed masses. This means reaching out to you as a cancer patient or mother of a sick kid or whatthehell ever these idiots come up with that sounds bad and you, being a reasonable and caring human being, wouldn’t even think to question their claim. I mean, who the hell would make up something like that? I’ll defer you to the good ole GoFundMe fraud tracker we maintain to show you just how many people would make up something like that.
In fact, everyone should pay attention. You don’t need to be a famous actress with tens of thousands of fans to be fooled. It only takes one message, next thing you know you’re a party to the crime without even knowing it. It goes without saying: if some rando messages you about their GoFundMe campaign, tell them to go fuck themselves and their fake cancer too, and then report it to GoFundMe.
As of press time, the campaign organizer has halted donations on the original #SaveMayowa GoFundMe page. It was shared over 6k times, and over 3300 people donated.
Oh, and check out this Worldstar Hip Hop level crazy video of fans going off on Aimakhu over her part in perpetuating this alleged scam.
