‘The Umbrella Academy’ Star Robert Sheehan Awares Fans about Scammers and Catfishing

Scamming has become a very common thing in today’s world.

Nowadays, people make fake accounts of netizens, especially celebrities, and scam others for money or valuables. Moreover, catfishing is also rampant, with scammers making fake celebrities’ accounts.

Many people have been the victim of this, and most recently, Irish actor Robert Sheehan made his fans and followers aware of scammers and catfishing.

He is most known for his television appearances as Nathan Young in Misfits, Darren Treacy in Love/Hate, and Klaus Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy, as well as film roles as Tom Natsworthy in Mortal Engines and Simon Lewis in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

On July 27, 2023, he took to Instagram to share a handwritten note regarding scammers making fake accounts of himself to scam and catfish people.

In the note, he wrote, “Dear everyone, there are SCAMMERS pretending to be me. To confirm, I haven’t nor will I ask anyone for money for appearance/ dates/ whatever. Please ignore/report these people. Go raibh maith agat (thank you). (Real) Rob.”

Robert Sheehan wrote a handwritten note to make people aware of scammers and their scams. (Source: Instagram)

In the captions of the photo, he revealed that many of his fans and followers had been sending him screenshots of scammers pretending to be him. He noted:

Only stuff that comes through this here page is me, all the rest are impostors attempting to exploit people.

He once again also asked people to block and report accounts who were masquerading as him. 

People in the comment section were very thankful to him for bringing attention to scamming and catfishing.

A netizen wrote, “This is very considerate of you to post something bringing attention to this. While loads of people may know better, younger more naive souls could become easy targets. And yet so many others would ignore and never peep a single word of warning. Thank you Rob for being kind enough to say something!”

Another person noted how this culture was active in every fandom, yet Meta had not been doing anything about it.

“They’re in every fandom, it’s insane, I don’t understand why Meta won’t do anything. I’ve reported tons of them and nothing goes against the community standards. Thanks for warning us though, stay safe everyone,” they commented.

Musician Mia Asano also shared her experience with scammers. She replied to Sheehan’s post and pointed out, “It’s getting out of hand, one of my followers told me after my concert that he got scammed out of $2k by a fake account. Social media platforms won’t do anything about it!”

This is not the first time Sheehan has become the victim. Back in 2021, a guy by the name of Mark Byrne used fake Facebook profiles in the name of Love/Hate actors to persuade a 14-year-old girl to post naked photographs of herself.

Mark Byrne purported to be Killian Scott and Sheehan six years ago and targeted an impressionable young kid with his predatory behavior over a period of eight-month.

When he convinced and then forced her into giving him a lot of explicit photographs of herself, he told her she would get to meet the famous stars and perhaps obtain a role in the series.

Byrne, of Kilmore Close, Coolock, Dublin, pled guilty to one count of child exploitation for his actions between October 2013 and June 2014. At the time, he was 22 to 23 years old. 

As a result, he was handed a four-year suspended sentence.