A former Miss Ireland told how her Instagram account was cloned by vile hackers who were trying to scam her followers.
Lauren McDonagh was crowned Miss Donegal in 2017 and went on to represent Ireland in China at Miss World, the beauty has since become an influencer setting up her own model agency with thousands of followers on social media.
Lauren, 21, told the Irish Mirror: “Whenever you’re in the public eye, you prepare yourself to get some hatred and to get some abnormal things that wouldn’t happen if you weren’t.
“But nothing prepares you for people using you to scam other people out of money.
“It was only a couple of days ago I was on Instagram and I was so thankful they were letting me know as I would have been none the wiser.
“There was a page that was pretending to be me, they were messaging everyone telling them they’d won a giveaway but they were scamming them to get money from them.
“They blocked me from the get go, so thankfully I found out.
“I managed to get the page taken down, but then the next morning, the same thing again, there was another account doing the exact same thing, using my pictures using my name.
“I just sat there and bawled out crying, these times are hard enough for these people, it’s not fair there’s someone out there using me to scam people.
“It’s one thing making a fake profile of someone, but it’s another thing, scamming people.
As an influencer the stunner had been using her profile to work with brands to give her followers the odd pick me up prize, the fake account holders had exploited Lauren’s kind hearted gesture in an attempt to scam her followers.
She added: “A Lot of brands contact me to collaborate with them, I started doing it in the first lockdown to give people a pick me up.
“So it’s heartbreaking that these scammers were trying to blacken my name, these people were just taking advantage, it’s disgusting.
“It’s just heartbreaking that it can happen so easily that someone can use someone else’s identity.”
The ambitious beauty also works in the tourism sector promoting her native Donegal, in beauty as a makeup artist and more recently setting up her model agency lmdmodels.
Representing Ireland at Miss World in China was a “whirlwind, she adds and her career has taken off ever since.
She added: “I’ve been building up a profile since winning.
“I was 18 when I won Miss Ireland so I was only a baby.
“I turned 18 in July, I was supposed to be starting social science in the September, but it never happened and I was off to China but nursing is still a dream of mine.
“My mum is a nurse and she goes out every day risking her health for others, I feel so proud, if I ever have a family I’d love them to see me out doing something like that.”
