The scammer wooed the fan by masquerading as Severide.
The One Chicago franchise is about fictional crimes, and the lengths the characters have to go through to protect civilians. Unfortunately, one fan fell victim to a real-life crime when a scammer pretending to be Chicago Fire star Taylor Kinney drained $80K from her sister’s bank account.
The sister of the fan in question, Sally, told Chicago outlet WMAQ that her sister was contacted by the scammer via a One Chicago fan page, and struck up a friendship that initially seemed harmless. As time went on, however, things changed.
A Chicago women thought she was friends with Kinney
The scammer pretending to be Kinney upped the ante, and started asking to borrow large sums of cash under the pretense that he was having issues with his NBC contract:
“”It progressed from ‘Hey, buy this fan card,’ to ‘Hey, I need money, my manager is holding my contract and not giving me money to use to get out of that contract.””
Sally went on to tell the outlet that her sister is expecting to meet Kinney in person, after spending a year communicating with the scammer, and that she was even shown a phony contract to convince her to send more money.
The scam worked, evidently, as Sally’s sister drained all of her savings, cashed out her 401(k), and has even taken out loans in an effort to help who she thinks is the star of Chicago Fire. Things got so dire, in fact, that Sally’s sister took out a loan against her car, despite it already being paid off.
The woman has lost $80k to the scammer
Sally attempted to file a police report, but it hasn’t stopped her sister from spending upwards of $80k on the scammer claiming to be Kinney. Sally added that the requests kept increasing as the scammer felt more comfortable:
“They just kept asking for more, more, more. It’s a lot of loving language, a lot of ‘honeys’ and ‘my queens.’ They’re very, very good. “
Unfortunately, according to the Federal Trade Commission, Sally’s sister’s predicament is not all that uncommon. In 2023 alone, 64,000 were scammed out of $10 billion. How, you might ask? The same methodology the aforementioned scammer used: pretending to be a celebrity.
Be warned! If someone claims to be Taylor Kinney, keep in mind the actor is currently dating someone and is rarely on social media.
