Paddy McGuinness is scammed out of £600 by someone posing as Derek Griffiths on Twitter
Turns out you can't always trust that little blue tick
Paddy McGuinness has revealed that he was scammed out of £600 by someone pretending to be Derek Griffiths.
The Take Me Out host had excitedly tweeted about winning an auction on eBay for a dinner with the children's TV and Coronation Street legend, whose Twitter account @derekgriffiths was verified with a blue tick.
But all was not as it seemed and it turned out that no-one was a winner at all – least of all Paddy, who realised that he had actually been scammed, and that the £600 he believed he was donating to an autism charity had just been stolen from him.
"Not a good start to 2018," wrote Paddy on Twitter. I paid over £600 to a supposed Autism charity for the below [tickets]. Turns out this sack of s**t... has been scamming money off people under the guise of charity for a long time. Next stop for me is @gmpolice to report this scum bag."
The BBC contacted representatives for Derek Griffiths who confirmed that he has never used Twitter and that the account was a fake.
More like this
Other people also came forward to say that they had been asked for money by someone posing as Griffiths, including Hollyoaks actress Annie Wallace.
The Derek Griffiths Twitter account has been suspended and the charity listings removed from eBay. Maybe Paddy should now advertise Action Fraud instead of online bingo?
