Veteran Mediacorp actor Li Nanxing said in a Facebook post on 18 January that his Instagram account had been hacked by scammers.
The actor also urged his followers not to respond to any messages from his hacked account asking for money.
Speaking to Shin Min Daily News, Li said that he discovered that he couldn’t access his account on Tuesday at about 2am.
His church friends then told him that someone was using his name and attempting to borrow money and that the amount requested was $40,000.
Thankfully the scammer’s attempt was foiled as the friend didn’t fall for the trick.
Here is Li Nanxing’s statement:
“Hi everyone, just to inform the public that our Instagram account @LNXGLOBAL_OFFICIAL has been hacked last night.
kindly do NOT respond to any other Instagram post.
We will try our best to restore it as soon as possible.”
Hacker told him to call a number if he wanted his account back
Li then received an email telling him to contact a certain phone number with a +44 prefix (the UK’s country code) if he wanted to get his account back.
The email was also sent under the name “Akilla”.
However, it appears there is light at the end of the tunnel as the actor’s account was reinstated on 19 January at about 9pm with the help of Instagram and Facebook’s IT team and nobody fell victim to the monetary requests.