Someone Else Was Me

Thank you to all the humans who gave me the courage to write this article.

Everyone online shows you the highlight reel. All the good and none of the bad. And I think people are tired of that, so I’m telling you the truth.

Remember how I said in my last article that PR is really dangerous? Well, here’s how I found that out.

When I say PR or media, that includes social media. Social media is really an extension of the legacy media, and both are components of public relations. As part of that, your social media profiles are very important. I know mine was.

I’m not a huge fan of talking about the past HOWEVER humans still come at me today bringing this up. After my Instagram was taken over I basically deleted myself from the internet, and it’s been extremely challenging to build traction online since. That’s why I decided to do this four-part series. I needed to set the record straight, for myself and for my family, and so that when I meet new people, they have a little bit of context about my background.

What happened

So, long story short.

My Instagram account got hacked. The hackers took over my identity and then messaged all the people I was connected with on Instagram, offering them a Bitcoin investment scam. And I guess because people trusted me, they sent these people a lot of money.

The scam was basically: give me a dollar, and in 30 days I’ll give you $1,000. And they got away with it.

I never would have imagined this was possible. I wouldn’t have imagined that someone would send someone, say, $20,000 over an Instagram message without getting on a phone call, or even texting me. Nonetheless, people fell for it, and in a very, very, very short period of time, basically overnight, my entire life was overturned.

Basically overnight

Not only was I waking up to a bunch of people hating me every single day because they thought I scammed them, I also had no access to money, because my bank account was frozen while the bank created new accounts and cards for me.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t even receive more money for my business. Money that customers owed and new money from new customers. Since the bank account was frozen, the credit card processor couldn’t charge their fees, so they stopped processing payments from customers. Now I’m left without a bank account and without any way to make more money. I was basically screwed. And it all happened in less than a few days.

There was bills to pay. Software bills, rent, employees, contractors. And they all thought I was joking, like I was making this up, as if I just didn’t want to pay them, which wasn’t true. That added to my frustration a lot. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do.

Trying to make it right

I tried to do everything I could think of to limit the damage. I posted on my other social profiles that my page had been hacked. When a girl here who got hit by the scam told me, I immediately rode my electric bike over to her apartment at Heinz Lofts and helped her file a police report and call her bank. I filed reports with the Pittsburgh police, the FBI’s internet crimes division, the Better Business Bureau, the California Attorney General’s Office, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. I even sent a letter and a tweet to our state house representatives and senators. None of it worked. Maybe a solution is to dedicate 10 percent of all profits from my next venture to any victims of this scam? Would I myself be included in that payback pool? I don't know. What do you think?

I tried contacting Instagram. I talked to my attorney. He said that a lot of the times Instagram doesn’t even respond to attorneys and its not worth the hassle to have him send a letter. And I didn’t have any money to pay the attorney anyway, because remember, everything was frozen for 30 to 60 days.

To try to make things right, I sold everything I owned so I could at least pay people and bills. Below is a photo of my empty studio with everything I had left.

Looking back, selling everything looks even worse, because it makes it seem like you’re in a really bad spot. Which I was, just not for the reason people thought. Remember, revenue for this business was growing 10 to 20 percent month over month, and we had just launched a new high-ticket offer where we could offer financing on $5,000 to $30,000 packages to anyone who asked. We had just sold 3 to 5 of these offers the weeks prior. Customers are willing to pay a lot more money for things when they can finance them out over 36 months. This was an exciting time. I digress.

So anyways, I paid all the bills I could with the money I had from selling everything, and that was it. I couldn’t pay them anymore, I couldn’t take payments, and I couldn’t run my business. I couldn't pay bills. No one trusted me. My credit was ruined. Verizon randomly canceled my cell phone, so no one could even reach me. The devastation lasted for years.

Some people even thought I was such an evil genius that I reported myself to the authorities on purpose. That makes no sense to me. If I’m such an evil genius, why would I use my own identity to run a Bitcoin investment scam? If I was so smart wouldn't I steal someone else's identity or create a synthetic identity?

What I learned about human nature

To be quite frank with you, this was probably the greatest lesson I ever learned in life, because it taught me so much about human nature that I never thought I would see.

Here’s how it works. Somebody gets a message from you on Instagram. People are so busy, they don’t really think about it. Then, instead of telling you anything, they go to all their friends and say they got this scammy message from you, or that you scammed them.

Before you know it, you’re out in society and all these people think badly of you because of something you didn’t even know happened. They never tell you about it. They just tell their friends and family. Ruin your livelihood. Then move on with their lives without ever thinking about it again. No apology. No restitution.

That’s the craziest part of it. And it can happen to anyone so fast in the blink of an eye.

Guilty until proven innocent

And it kept going. Instagram never responded to me, and they let these people keep going. They did not care that someone stole the account and was scamming people. They just kept rolling with it. I lost a lot of faith in people, and I lost my confidence for a while. This went on for a long time. So I started writing letters myself.

In hindsight, I should have driven to California and knocked on Instagram’s door, or hung out on the street near their offices until I found an employee who would help me.

In hindsight, I should have been paying for influencer insurance through a company like Hartford.

But I didn't, so I kept writing letters.

That was my low point. My personal and professional reputation was ruined. It felt like everywhere I went, people hated me. No one could help. My family thought I was this terrible person. No one would associate with me. Even one of my best friends, someone I’d known since I was a kid, kept spreading this lie. It really hurt my feelings. I saw the true nature of humanity when this happened, and I feel bad for anybody who goes through something like this.

The part that hurt most

After everything I did for people my whole life, not one person apologized for how they treated me, slandered me, or dragged my name through the mud. And that is the part I'm still working out with the universe.

Becoming a ghost

After all of this, I was afraid to use the internet. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a living for yourself or run a business or market a business, especially a new one, but it’s very difficult to do without the internet. It’s nearly impossible. I tried that for four or five years. I tried to be a ghost. I tried to remove everything about me from the internet. I'd come up here and there to give it a shot but I just wasn't able to have the same confidence online that it takes to make rockets launch. And I just wasn’t able to make any progress.

Starting over

I had a little saved up and after everything was unfrozen I had a small amount of residual income, so I was able to reset for a year or so while I worked through all of this. I tried to restart the business, but I couldn’t get my confidence and positive attitude back to rebuild what I had already built and get back to where I'd already been. Not to mention its extremely boring solving a problem that was already solved. So I went exploring to figure out what I actually wanted next: podcasting, nonprofit work, volunteer work, the venture capital, private equity, family office, and investment banking world, artificial intelligence, faith and theology.

Why I’m sharing this

That’s what happened to me. That’s where I’ve been, and that’s why I’ve been off the internet. But I realize that if I’m going to get on with my life and career, I’ve got to fix that. Truth be told, there's a lot I've got to fix. This series is the start of me doing that.

Hopefully this gives you some insight. If you know anybody who’s gone through a similar experience, or you have yourself, hopefully you can understand them better now, and maybe have a little more empathy. And just realize that gossip, slander, and lying about people is very harmful. Extremely harmful. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, not even my enemy.

I hope you have a great day, a great year, and a great life. I’m glad I’m done writing about the past now.

I’m going to figure out my next thing now. The thing I work on for the next 10 or 20 years. Thank you for reading. Talk to you soon. ONWARD!

Never Perfect

Dan

Thank you to all the people who gave me the courage to write this article.