‘It’s thieving’: impersonators steal elderly people’s TikToks to hawk mass-produced goods

Fraudsters are manipulating content of older adults as sadness bait' to push sales. The videos are going viral

In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling TikTok when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business in Ohio. But the video Yelichek was seeing was not from Tsaftarides' actual page, which has nearly 41,000 followers - but instead originated from a profile of someone claiming to be a sad old man" whose cat sanctuary was at risk of shutting down.

Please stay 8 seconds so I don't have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into," the text on the video said, adding that the sanctuary would be selling slippers to raise additional funds. The bid for sympathy worked on many viewers, garnering millions of views and tens of thousands of users leaving concerned comments. Just ordered two! Sending love to these kittens," wrote one. Another commenter said: thank you for all you do for these babies." Others even asked if there was a GoFundMe link to donate directly to the cat shelter.