{"id":40223,"date":"2025-06-23T09:07:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/23\/its-thieving-impersonators-steal-elderly-peoples-tiktoks-to-hawk-mass-produced-goods-21\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T09:07:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:07:03","slug":"its-thieving-impersonators-steal-elderly-peoples-tiktoks-to-hawk-mass-produced-goods-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/23\/its-thieving-impersonators-steal-elderly-peoples-tiktoks-to-hawk-mass-produced-goods-21\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s thieving\u2019: impersonators steal elderly people\u2019s TikToks to hawk mass-produced goods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fraudsters are manipulating content of older adults as \u2018sadness bait\u2019 to push sales. The videos are going viral<\/p>\n<p>In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/tiktok\">TikTok<\/a> when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business in Ohio. But the video Yelichek was seeing was not from Tsaftarides\u2019 actual page, which has nearly 41,000 followers \u2013 but instead originated from a profile of someone claiming to be a \u201csad old man\u201d whose cat sanctuary was at risk of shutting down.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease stay 8 seconds so I don\u2019t have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into,\u201d the text on the video said, adding that the sanctuary would be selling slippers to raise additional funds. The bid for sympathy worked on many viewers, garnering millions of views and tens of thousands of users leaving concerned comments. \u201cJust ordered two! Sending love to these kittens,\u201d wrote one. Another commenter said: \u201cthank you for all you do for these babies.\u201d Others even asked if there was a GoFundMe link to donate directly to the cat shelter.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2025\/jun\/22\/tiktok-elderly-impersonator-videos-sales\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fraudsters are manipulating content of older adults as \u2018sadness bait\u2019 to push sales. The videos are going viral In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling TikTok when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/flwnet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}