No, It's Not Me. Please Stop Asking

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Every message starts off the same way: “Is this you?”

 Sometimes it’s followed by a screen cap, or a shared profile – of a very bad copy of my own actual profile on Instagram. “It looks just like your page, is this your second account?”

 It doesn’t seem to matter how many Instagram stories I post about this, how many Instagram feed posts I create of me holding up a hand-written sign saying, “@sabrinamscott is my only Instagram account, and the only way to book with me is through my website, sabrinamscott.com.” It doesn’t matter how many comparative memes I post, trying to educate people about the differences between the ways authentic tarot readers and spiritual teachers with long-standing businesses do things, and the way scammers do things.

 It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I post, trying to protect all y’all, about how I don’t even currently offer any tarot service for less than $900. Then I get attacked, for being an arrogant snob, apparently, when all I’m trying to do is educate folks that if someone pretending to be me approaches them and offers a reading that costs $100, there’s absolutely no way that that would be me.

 As someone who has just under 13k followers on Instagram, I get a ton of messages from people asking that repeat question, “is this you?” Even when I put in my bio “this is my only account, I will not DM you for a reading.” I’ve since taken it out, since it doesn’t seem to fucking matter, nobody reads it anyway, and I’m still flooded with DMs. So I wanted to make a simple blog post where I could just direct everybody to, and set the record straight.

I am of course frustrated that Instagram won’t do anything to prevent or remove these scammers, who are violating me in a few ways – theft of intellectual property (my writing, my photos, my posts), impersonation, committing fraud, and all of this has the end result of diluting my brand and the trust I’ve worked more than a decade to build.

Why me?

Not to pat myself on the back too much – the scammers are targeting everybody – but I feel like one reason the scammers keep replicating my account (badly) is because people are actually falling for it. Does that mean my followers are more gullible?

No; I think it just means that I’ve been working really hard to build a good reputation and trust with my community. I stand out in this space, and people do trust me. I am incredibly annoyed that this whole bullshit situation is likely diluting my brand, and people’s trust in my work and my name; unfortunately, some sad souls seem to think I’m the one scamming them, and may report my legitimate account.

The rage I feel about this can’t be contained in words, after how long I’ve spent building my audience and platform, that all these scammers are more or less trying to crumble my business for their own benefit. I don’t want my face to be associated with scamming - but they’ve stolen my images and my name, endlessly. I report them to Instagram, they disappear, and five more pop up in its place. At one point I spent 2 hours per day submitting copyright infringement reports to Instagram. Sometimes the accounts would get removed, sometimes they wouldn’t. I’ve reported accounts for impersonating me and Instagram still doesn’t remove them. I’m not sure what else I can do here, other than write this blog post and move on with my life.

How do professional tarot readers work?

Good, professional tarot readers who have been working for years don’t need to randomly mass DM their following, trawling for $50-$100 readings.

Though the scammers have proven to me that this is a remarkably effective tactic – making me somewhat annoyed I didn’t come up with it first, when I was a newbie reader – it’s not something successful professional readers have the time or interest in doing, and since the way they phrase their advances prey on peoples’ insecurities, it is actually widely seen as predatory to pick someone and say “I read your energy, I know more than you about your life, don’t you want to know?”

As professional readers, we wait for people to come to us. And good readers don’t need to wait long, as word spreads and clientele are happy and transformed. We often have more interest than we can readily accommodate into our schedules.

Professional readers will never reach out to a random stranger and say, “I feel your energy and the spirits are strong with you, I feel called by your energy to give you a reading right now.” First of all, I see it as some non-consensual energy creeping; I simply would not do this. Of course, the scammers are not actually noticing anyone’s energy, they’re sending the same message to literally everyone.

We all want to feel special

Unfortunately, these scammers, while absolutely obnoxious, have hit on something quite important in making this whole scam thing work – we all want to feel special, chosen, and noticed. If a spiritual figure or someone with a modest though respectable Instagram following that we’ve followed for years messages us out of the blue, wow – we might feel chosen by the God of our understanding. I can see how that kind of thing would feel incredibly flattering, especially for folks who feel lost, adrift, or depressed – which seems to be somewhat of the norm right now, as we enter year 3 of a global pandemic. I’m pretty sure literally everyone feels like they could use a tarot reading, that they are uniquely upset or are uniquely on the brink of growth.

And this desperation to be seen, to feel special and chosen, unfortunately seems to short-circuit the brains of a lot of people. Common sense goes out the window. They don’t think anything about how it’s not @sabrinamscott that’s messaging them, it’s @sabrinamscotts_ or @sabriinamscottt or even @sabrinamscott___. They don’t double check this by going to my website, sabrinamscott.com, nor do they seem phased by being asked to send $100 “friends and family” to melrodriguiez869 or jessicajim232 at Hotmail or AOL or whatever, on PayPal. In case no one noticed, my name is Sabrina. My last name is Scott. My only email address is all over my website. In case you missed it, it’s sabrinadraws at gmail dot com. Easy.

So here we see this massive problem with the spiritual community – a gullibility and an eagerness to believe, at any cost. Desperation, confirmation bias, all of these things run rampant. And so this seems like a remarkably easy population to scam, though I’ve seen it also happening to folks in other industries as well.

The first step to wellness, but wrong

The other crazy thing about all of this is that $100 is a lot of money to a lot of people.

And, as I know from years in this spiritual wellness industry, one of the first things I often have to do is convince people that they are worth spending money on. I often will have to massage into people that they are absolutely 500% worthy of investing in themselves, whether that’s through an online course of mine, a tarot reading, or even if it’s something outside of the services I provide, like spending $50 on bath bombs and face masks. People often struggle with worthiness and feeling special, confident, important, or relevant.

The spiritual wellness industry is a female, femme-dominated situation, both in terms of leaders and teachers, and clientele. And women (and those either raised as or socialized as women), often are trained to put ourselves last – to cater and pander to everyone else’s whim or need before ever attending to our own.

This industry is full of women looking to reclaim their sense of self and reconnect to their own power, their own sense of worthiness. Spending a few bucks on ourselves is often the first step to reclaiming this sense of self worth; I know it was for me.

And so while I on one hand am annoyed both with the scammers and the people who fall for it – the scammers are robbing these folks of something far greater than just $100: it’s what that $100 often represents: the first step to affirming self love, self worth, and self care.

And so, for some people making this leap from “I’m not worth spending any money on myself” to “I am worthy of treating myself to something that will help me grow spiritually, understand myself better, and feel at peace,” being scammed out of that $100 will often make people feel like foolish idiots, wallowing in a sea of shame. Are they likely to try to invest in themselves again any time soon?

For the one millionth time

I will never randomly DM you asking if you want a tarot reading,  “cheap” or otherwise

I will never DM you saying “grand rising” or that I was “drawn to your energy”

I don’t have a “reading account”

I don’t do one-off tarot readings anymore; I’ll be opening an application process shortly, so people can apply to work with me in a 1:1 container from between 6-12 months

My cheapest tarot reading when I did one-off readings was $897

I only accept payment through URLs that start with “sabrinamscott.thrivecart.com”

I will never ask you to send to some random joebob57 at Hotmail email addy on PayPal “friends and family.” No legitimate or serious business owner would ever do this, for a variety of reasons

My one email addy is sabrinadraws at gmail dot com, eventually I may use one hosted on my site sabrinamscott.com

I live in Canada, we don’t do Zelle, Cashapp, or Venmo

I’m a business, I accept money like a business

Personal responsibility

The scammers suck.

No doubt about that, and you won’t get any argument from me. But I am also not going to take responsibility for what isn’t mine to hold.

I’ve been posting about these scammers for more than a year.

I’ve made endless feed posts, Instagram stories, and reels. I’ve done my part in educating people about what to pay attention to, and what to watch out for.

At this point if you do get scammed, that’s one hundred percent on you.

Yes, scammers are assholes. I agree. But if you did get scammed, please self-reflect and make a plan to act differently next time. Don’t see it as a sign to never invest in yourself.

Rather, you can see it as a flashing warning light – wow, you were so deprived of self-care that the moment it was offered, you jumped before you even looked to see where you were jumping to, and who offered you that invitation.

What you can do to help

You may be wondering if sending me screen caps of scammers is helpful. It isn’t.

To be honest, it stresses me the fuck out, and it puts all of this in my lap to deal with, when in reality the only way to combat this is if we all share the responsibility. I’ve done my part, it’s your turn to do yours, and to help me.

What I would like you to do is talk to the scammers.

Waste their time. Say you’re interested in a reading, and get the email address associated with their PayPal, or whatever other money service they’re using.

Get their phone number if you can. Get as much information as you possibly can out of them. Take screen caps of everything, and send it all to PayPal. PayPal allows you to report this. You can find more information about reporting fraud to PayPal here and here.

If they ask you to send money another way, get their information and report it to that service,  so hopefully they get banned or at least flagged.

Once you’ve done this, and you’ve got all your evidence screen capped, you can report these accounts as “impersonating someone I know.” Unfortunately I am not fancy enough to be seen as a celebrity yet, LOL. Maybe one day! ;) This type of reporting relies on volume – so the more people report an account as an imposter, the more likely it is to be taken down. This is why, unfortunately, just me reporting it rarely ever has any impact.

Is it obnoxious that this is happening? Absolutely.

 As members of spiritual and wellness communities, it’s not just my responsibility to keep scammers out and report them when we see them – it’s all of our responsibility. If you value this space, and what you’ve come to experience in the spiritual community online, it’s important for all of us to take action against this – and that includes you.

And of course, one final message to any scammers reading this - some art inspired by the above screen caps, from my childhood friend Mira Silver Art -