Scammers set up fake Jersey Heritage accounts

Tuesday 23 November 2021

Jersey Heritage’s supporters have been targeted by scammers who set up fake social media accounts, purporting to be the charity, to ask for their bank details.

Over the past week, two profiles have been created on Instagram, encouraging people who follow the genuine ‘Jersey Heritage’ profile to follow the fake versions and enticing them to take part in a fake competition.

The fake Instagram profiles are ‘jerseyheritages’ with an additional ‘s’ and ‘jerseyheritageco’ with an extra ‘co’ at the end.

“We’d like to be very clear - neither of these profiles has anything to do with Jersey Heritage,” Jess Stanier, Jersey Heritage’s Marketing Manager, said. “They are not our accounts, and any communications they send people, or links they ask people to click on, are nothing to do with us and we urge people to report them.”

The scams follow a genuine and free ‘Heritage Lets’ giveaway run by the charity, which potentially caught the attention of the scammers.

A small number of Jersey Heritage’s followers accepted the request to follow the fake profiles while over 50 of them contacted the charity to say something wasn’t right, as well as helping with the reporting process. 

This morning, the charity shared a warning in a 'story' on their Instagram page. 

“We stand strongly together against these scammers,” Ms Stanier said.

“Our unique Heritage Lets are incredibly popular but we have still been overwhelmed with the 1,200 entries we have had so far for our competition to win a stay,” Ms Stanier added. 

“It has been incredibly frustrating to see online scammers turn what was a free giveaway into a scam requesting bank details from our Jersey Heritage online family. 

“To confirm, Jersey Heritage will never run a competition that requests anyone’s bank details and our advice is that if you are ever in doubt of a message you receive – call us and check. A friendly team member will quickly be able to tell people whether the message is legitimate.”