
Francesca Henry felt like she was in an episode of Black Mirror or BBC cyber drama The Capture, watching herself — or someone at least claiming to be her — peddling crypto scams on Instagram, unable to stop them.
The personal finance expert, 33, had been running her Instagram account The Money Fox (@the.moneyfox) for two years when one of her 36,000 followers first alerted her to the copycat account. Investigating, she was shocked to discover an almost-perfect replica of the Instagram profile she’d put so much time and energy into building: her name, her picture, each of her 300 or so posts, perfectly cloned from the videos to the captions. The only difference: a slightly altered Instagram handle, @the_moneyfox1, and plugs for a new cryptocurrency scheme hidden among her posts.