No one expects a message in their Instagram inbox that says, “Hey man, random, but pretty sure this account is pretending to be you and scamming folks.” But that’s exactly what happened to me earlier this year. Opening the link this good samaritan sent, I couldn’t see the profile. For a confused moment, I thought I was being toyed with, but I had been preemptively blocked by the scammer. I rushed into the other room and asked my partner to look up the account on her phone. Sure enough, I was staring back at myself.
Like staring into a mirror, the fake account was using my name, my professional headshot, and photos that I’ve shared from distillery tours and local whiskey events. This person had even stolen a photo I shared of one of our foster kittens. My snapshots were interspersed with photos of Van Winkle Family Reserve, E.H. Taylor, Jr., and other bottles that definitely weren’t mine. I felt bewildered and a bit violated. The last thing I would ever want to be associated with is defrauding fellow whiskey lovers. It felt personal, and I was compelled to figure out exactly what was going on and what my photos were being used for.
The Anatomy of a Whiskey Scam
Since the infancy of the United States, whiskey has often found itself on the wrong side of the law. From the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, the rectifiers of the 1800s, bootlegging during Prohibition, and, more recently, Pappygate, the outlaw image
