When Amardeep Singh Dhanjal – better known in his 2.1 million followers Tiktok under the name of Magic Singh – first saw an email asking him if he would be interested in being interviewed for “the podcast Bill Simmons”, he was excited. It was a request that made sense. After all, he signed with the management company of the United States, Entertainment Lab, a few months ago and appeared on “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” of the CW earlier this year.
“They wanted to interview me and talk about magic, my career, what I do with my social and the shows I have done,” Magic told, as he asked to be called, to Thewrap. “They all excuse me.”
But what started as a funny public relations opportunity quickly turned into 24 hours of anxiety when Magic was a victim of a crook who pretended to be a reservation agent for famous American podcasts. Thanks to two -factor authentication and his team, Magic was lucky. He was able to disconnect before any real damage was caused.
But cybercrime hitting the creators of online media is increasing. In 2024, the FBI reported that online cybercriminals and crooks had defeated a record of $ 16.6 billion, almost 33% more than in 2023. In the world of Podcasting, it became a strong headache, with an initiate in a major podcasting brand saying 18 months.
A scam that successfully takes up the social media account of a creator can be devastating. Years of content, growth of followers and public confidence – which are all vital to obtain brand sponsorships – can be demolished in a few seconds. And when you talk about a monetized social account, as is the case with Magic’s Facebook profile, the loss is even more immediate.
In an industry full of entrepreneurs, many of whom are solely responsible for their creator empires, the history of Magic is a edifying story.
“You have spent X for the number of years building so many followers, and you monetize it or you get branding offers or you use it as a platform to advertise your work,” he said. “Can you imagine if it had disappeared in a few seconds?”
This painful achievement is the reason why Magic and Entertainment Lab was so eager to share its history with the media. “If this happens constantly, we have to protect everyone. It is people’s livelihoods,” he added.
It started with an email
The Magic email was as harmless as it is complementary.
“William Dave” began by politely presenting himself as a manager of the “Podcast Bill Simmons” and summarizing certain key details of Magic’s career, such as his acceptance in the prestigious magical company known as Magic Circle. It also included a complete email signature with a head of “William”, a Los Angeles postal code and a link to the Ringer’s website.
E-mail has been transmitted to Magic through its management company of the entertainment laboratory, which makes it more legitimate. “They were very cheeky because what they did was that they crossed the direction to achieve me,” said Magic.
At first glance, the email seemed to be a well-documented and polished press request, almost identical to thousands of other sent to celebrities and creators every day. But with hindsight, certain elements are distinguished. On the one hand, the message is strangely similar to what is produced when the chatpt is requested “who is Magic Singh?” This complies with the data reported by the Identity Flight Resource Center, which revealed that using AI in digital scams has been increasing. The email also describes “the Podcast Bill Simmons” as “a virtual series broadcast exclusively on Facebook”, although the real podcast is available on all the main Podcasting platforms. This is a detail that only fans or industry initiates would probably catch. Another suspicious element is the e-mail address itself, which is invited.simmons@gmail.com instead of using the format @ theader.com that the press organization generally uses.
The Ringer did not respond to the request for Thewrap comments.
After Magic agreed to be on the podcast, he was asked to make a test call before the interview to test the audio and the video – a request that is not yet out of the ordinary. When this test call took place on Facebook rather than in the Zoom or Microsoft teams, Magic began to become a little suspicious, but he rocked it. After all, he was a creator with a substantial audience. Maybe the Ringer wanted to take advantage of its audience via a live Facebook flow. “It looked legitimate,” said Magic.
Magic connected to Reunion using his phone, a choice that was made of convenience but which may have helped to protect it. His hackles were noted when the technician with whom he spoke did not make his camera light up and his name was simply listed as “podcast”. Magic brushed him again like a quirk. As a journalist who appeared on podcasts and who participated in interviews myself, not seeing a member of the technological team on the camera is not unusual or strange name conventions. But when the technological team member tried to ensure that the interview was one of Magic’s Facebook events, the red flags began to agitate seriously.
“He said,” Do you see the Podcast Ringer? ” And I’m going, “No, there is nothing there,” he recalls.
Then, the member of the technological team asked Magic to go through his director following Meta Business, where he heads his Facebook account and his belongings. Its page, which has 151,000 subscribers, is monetized.
“They wanted to have access to accounts,” he said.
The technician then asked Magic to share his screen, which Magic made sure of any sensitive information like passwords. When the event would still not appear for Magic, the technician asked him to generate a link – probably a property link – via his account, then copy and paste this link to a browser.
“I did that, Boom, then an error appeared,” said Magic.
His phone then started to buzz on several occasions. Later, Magic learned that his friend, who is also a business associate accessing the social channels of Magic, called him and sent him an SMS several times after noticing a suspicious activity rush on Magic’s accounts. When Magic hung up on the crook to understand what his friend wanted, he always believed that he was interviewed by the Ringer. He told the crook that he reminded him.
In the minutes between Magic, hang up and talk to his partner, the crook tried to change control of the Magic Facebook account. Fortunately, his partner was able to restore everything to normal. The magic then had to wait impatiently 24 hours until the link he sent to the crooks expires. He checked his account “every half hour” during this period, except for midnight hours and 5:00 a.m., the GMT when the crook tried to change the property of his page again.
“I was tense for 24 hours,” said Magic.
A scam of many
By thinking about experience, Magic attributes to his team, two -fact factors and luck as the reasons why his account was spared. If he had used his laptop to call the crooks, there was a chance that he quickly approved the pop-up asking to control his Facebook profiles to a criminal. This additional complication of the phone saved it from the disaster.
He also praised the entertainment laboratory for quickly contacted the local police service about the scam.
One of the friends based in the United Kingdom of Magic was not as lucky. The friend was contacted by a crook who pretended to be a reservation agent offering about $ 4,000 to appear on “The Tony Robbins Podcast”. “The Podcast Tony Robbins” did not respond to the request for Thewrap comments.
“His account was completely hacked,” said Magic. “He also has a massive audience. They kept his Facebook, his Instagram, his Whatsapp – everything had gone.”
Fortunately, the friend was able to recover his accounts after talking to Meta.
The exact type of magic of the scam has almost dropped has increased. A report from the Identity Flight Resource Center revealed that identity scams increased by 148% this year compared to the last. More than half of the time, these programs involve crooks usurping the identity of a business.
For this article, Thewrap has examined several emails from other crooks who claim to be used by influential podcasters. The host of “Beh’y Honnating” Kristin Cavallari came several times, but “Keep It Real” by Jillian Michaels, “The Mel Robbins” Podcast “by Mel Robbins” and “Dear Chelsea” by Chelsea, the Chelsea manager also appeared. Many of these emails have followed the same format as Magic described, asking their victim to appear in an exclusive episode of Facebook or Instagram. Others were more transparent, promising thousands of dollars in remuneration to have probably access to the bank account of their target. Like Magic, these emails seem flattering and well documented at first glance, giving only their harmful intentions through e-mail areas and strange physical addresses which contain only cities and postal codes.
Before this experience, Magic did not consider himself the type of person who would fall for an online scam, crediting the prestige around the Ringer and Bill Simmons as a major reason for which the ploy worked. “It literally has to do with the severity of these people. I am sure there are decent podcasts here in the United Kingdom, but at the minute when you launch an American name like that, it’s just, ‘Oh, yes, of course. I will do anything,” said Magic. “You will jump on occasion.”
He also does not understand what is the final objective for these crooks, but he thinks that it has to do with the sale of accounts with important subscribers. “It’s crazy. It’s a matter for these people to take people’s accounts, because what they are going to do, they will take your account, wipe everything, but they have an X number that is on the account,” he said. “They can just make a new channel, then sell it to someone for the amount of money they want. So I suppose it is their intention.”
Magic remembers some specific details on the man he spoke. He remembers hearing the background noise which, retrospectively, makes him think that the person was talking to him about a call center. He also thinks that the man had an accent. “I don’t know if it was a European accent,” he said. “There was an American Twang at his accent at the same time.”
More than anything else, experience has left confused and suspicious magic. “We always say that our contact details are encrypted to a certain extent. But how much access do we have? What access to others have such sensitive information? ” Magic asked. “But it is good to know that we can share this story with other people so that it does not happen to anyone else.”
