The 'Fake Wealth' Industry Helping Social Media Influencers Get Ahead

 'Fake it til you make it' is an adage that a certain type of social media influencer adores. It's everywhere in influencer culture. Once upon a time it was an innocent saying - more of a suggestion of 'work hard and all your dreams will come true', rather than a literal suggestion to be dishonest in your pursuits. Today, it seems to have taken a more sinister tune - 'lie, cheat, fool those around you until you get what you want - or it would seem, until you are exposed'.

Anna Sorokin in court 2017

At the extreme end you have millennials like Anna Sorokin aka Anna Delvey, the Russian-born German fraudster who pretended to be a wealthy German heiress and socialite ended up scamming banks, hotels and wealthy friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to live out her fantasy lifestyle. 

Billy McFarland is another - the fantasist/con-artist promoter of Fyre Festival, who was so convincing in setting up his VIP festival he got Ja Rule in on the act as well as a gaggle of celebrity friends to promote his disastrous brainchild.

in April 2017, roughly 5,000 people spent hundreds to thousands of dollars for tickets to what they thought would be the experience of a lifetime: a luxury music festival in an idyllic tropical setting on a private island in the Bahamas. In fact, the Fyre Festival went down in a flames - mass disorganisation and McFarland's barrage of lies to investors saw him jailed for 6 years owing $26 million. Ironically, those who bought tickets to the festival, were themselves portrayed by the media and mocked on social media for wanting to be a part of the celebrity aspirational culture that McFarland was selling the Fyre island experience as. As if they somehow deserved to be conned for being 'wannabe celebrities'.

JaRule and Billy McFarland 

On a lesser scale, but no less delusional, teenage Gen Z 'influencer' Lillee Jean Truman, who presented herself as a model, entrepreneur, make-up artist and lifestyle guru from New York, but in reality faked most of her followers and exploits - in fact it would seem she faked her entire life online and was outed as an imposter, much to her embarrassment.  

In truth, there's a whole host of young people who are so desperate to live out the lifestyle they wish they had, that 'faking it' has become a cultural phenomenon.

While Anna Sorokin and Billy McFarland focused their scamming out in the real world, others choose to carry out their fraudulent activities online - more specifically, in the world of 'social media influencer' culture. 

Over the last decade, we have seen social media grow rapidly in importance. More than 3.4 billion people actively use social media - that's 45% of the world’s population.

Inevitably these people look up to influencers in social media to guide them with their decision making.

Influencers in social media are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views. Brands love social media influencers because they can create trends and encourage their followers to buy products they promote.

While celebrities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber and Ariana Grand reign supreme on social media, other personalities such as Tiktoker Charli D'Ameio and Youtubers 'PewDiePie' and Whinderson Nunes Batista also have huge followings.

Charli D'Amelio is Tiktok's most successful star

Becoming a successful influencer can amass ridiculous wealth for what seems like not very much work, so it's no surprise that people will do anything to jump on the bandwagon. A report earlier this year found that simply having 42,575 followers is enough to earn the average UK salary in #sponcon deals and ad revenue. They influencer industry as a whole is projected to be worth over £11 billion by 2022.

The problem is, not everyone has the charisma, good looks or discernible talent it takes to become a successful influencer. Not everyone is lucky enough to get that massive stroke of luck or reality tv gig to give you that shove up the ladder. As a result, some have turned to the 'fake wealth' industry.

I've discussed previously the trend of vloggers editing themselves onto sandy beaches, photographing themselves next to, or in private jets or supercars they've rented, whilst wearing fake or borrowed Rolexes, in order to dupe viewers into thinking they're super-wealthy and therefore worth following. Instagram has similar content creators who people follow for what they see as their aspirational content. Some content creators have figured out that you don't actually have to be wealthy, but as long as you project wealth, the followers will follow and ultimately the fake wealth will become a reality. 

In the UK, the latest 'false wealth' trend involves empty designer boxes or shopping bags. Buying a Gucci carrier bag on eBay to cart your gym kit around is nothing new, but these days they are specifically being used by wannabe Molly Maes for aspirational Instagram photo shoots. 

An anonymous designer reseller with a mostly influencer clientele disclosed a recent spike in demand for empty boxes from designer labels – especially Hermes, Pandora, and Tiffany – in an interview with Input Mag. “At first, I thought it was maybe to store some stuff at home, or to recycle it as a gift box for someone,” she told Input. “I didn’t know they used it for Instagram shoots.”

Empty designer box selling has become a lucrative business

A quick search on Depop and you'll find Dior shoe boxes going for £30 and Gucci hat boxes for £35. And apparently fake wealth flexing does work - the reseller from the Input Mag interview claims one of the influencers who bought Pandora boxes from her now has genuine sponsorship deals with luxury brands. 

However, the flaunting of fake wealth can come at a cost - a very embarrassing one at that. Get caught out and your whole image is kaput. 

Popular influencer Kayla Massa went one step further. Massa, who goes by the online handle @Kayg0ldi, has been charged with fraud after allegedly defrauding her Instagram followers of over $1 million (£766,505). Massa, who hails from New Jersey and has over 330,000 followers, is accused of duping over 45 individuals into revealing their bank account information with her.  

As exposed in n in-depth Quartz report, Massa is accused of luring individuals into her fraudulent plan using Instagram Stories, where she'd post aspirational photos of money with statements like, "If you got a bank account and are interested in making legal money, (hit me up) ASAP," . Many of the respondents were under the age of eighteen.

Kayla Massa scammed her teenage followers out of over $1million

Flaunting fake wealth is embarrassing for the individual involved, and in extreme cases can lead to jail time if you break the law. Creators posing as brand advocates can also taint rather than enhance that specific brand, destroying any chances of working with them in the future.

Unless you're Anna Sorokin of course, who despite her 4 year jail sentence seems to have come out on top - now that she is free she has a writing career and a Netflix series to boot. Her lawyer even managed to put a positive spin on her con-artistry. 

During his opening statement, Sorokin’s lawyer Todd Spodek said there’s a bit of Anna in everyone. “Through her sheer ingenuity, she created the life that she wanted for herself,” he said. “Anna was not content with being a spectator, but wanted to be a participant. Anna didn’t wait for opportunities, Anna created opportunities. Now we can all relate to that.”

Not that I am in any way promoting criminality. Pretending to be rich is obviously much cheaper than chartering a private jet or going on a Gucci shopping spree, but that doesn't mean you should do it. And the chances of ending up like Kayla Massa or Billy McFarland rather than Anna Sorokin - that is, career tatters/in jail and without a Netflix deal, is much more likely.

Indeed, Scott Guthrie who works as an independent influencer marketing consultant, recently told Vice magazine, that if it's luxury brand deals you're after. “A better way to catapult yourself into becoming an influencer who works with a luxury brand is to tap into the values supporting that brand’s positioning,” he says. “So it’s more important to be creative and innovative with your content.” 

Flex Culture: The Social Media Phenomenon of Showing off Your Wealth

 What is flexing?

In today's world, having wealth and fame often goes hand-in-hand with showing it off. On social media and YouTube, this is commonly referred to as "flexing."If you were to sit and count every post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok that you would call “show–offy,” the result would be astronomical.

Flexing seems to be a staple on social media these days. But is flexing simply a celebration of how good your life is, or is it deeper than that? 

Artists have flexed in their lyrics and music videos for a long time, talking about how much money they make, or how many cars they have. 

Although flexing most commonly refers to showing off material possessions and wealth, it can manifest in a number of ways. You may flex your social status or the number of people you’re friends with, how much you travel, your physique, or how successful or intelligent you are. After all, how many of us have Penn 20–something in our bios? These days, flexing is all over social media.

Wealth Flexing, the focus of this piece, is specifically flaunting your wealth. You may have encountered it in meme form: In early 2018, "weird flex but OK" was the only appropriate response to bizarre social media boasting. Sometimes the bragging methods were questionable, but the impulse to brag was never taken to task. Why? Over the last few years, flexing has become a social media genre of its own—and a popular one.

“Flexing on the ‘Gram” has become a trend, with celebrities such as the rapper Lil Pump flexing on Instagram to prove that they have made it to the top. When people critique him for his rapping skills, Lil Pump shows off his wealth and expensive clothing, using them as proof of his worthiness.

Examples of flexing

It is a self-evident truth that social media apps such as Twitter or Instagram have over time morphed into tools used by the masses to gain validation through likes.

The #richboycheck hashtag on TikTok, is where the apparently wealthy young “flex”, while others mercilessly mock them. On display are wads of cash, flashy cars, Rolexes and closets stacked with designer footwear. They photograph themselves in private jets and holidaying at exclusive resorts or private villas.

Other social media celebrities flex in the same way. With designer bags and luxury cars, riches are used as a reflection of success, and the outrageous Instagram posts can bring in thousands of likes and millions of followers. This is exemplified by Internet personality Jake Paul. His diss tracks are primarily focused on bragging about his wealth, cars, and million–dollar home. The idea being pushed is that it is his wealth that makes him interesting - that makes him more important than others on the app.

Youtube promulgates a similar lifestyle. YouTubers buying out entire stores, buying entire towns, walking through stores blindfolded and buying everything they touch, learning to drive in cars they really want you to know cost $250,000. Haul and "get ready with me" videos have upgraded to become videos that boast their cost in the title (£30,000 Dior Haul!) and the $10,000 outfit challenge. Spending their wealth extravagantly has always been something celebrities have done, but now letting people watch you spend extravagantly is almost enough to make you a celebrity.

Influencers like @joellefriend use the company, Sky Helicopters for their social media sites (Sky Helicopters

However, for those viewing these often vulgar displays of wealth, they can end up feeling desperately jealous, empty and inferior. Social psychologists call this inferiority phenomenon Instagram Envy.

Social media can make others’ lives seem really glamorous and exciting, but many influencers who seem to be living in luxury have also admitted to feeling empty. Through flexing comes a false sense that material things are what make us happy. But could this sense of emptiness also be because the wealth flex isn't entirely authentic?

It’s not surprising to hear that people will go to lengths for a chance at that lifestyle. So what does the modern wannabe do? It isn’t difficult to imagine the rationalisation behind the thinking. If everybody who is online broadcasts the best version of themselves, why not go a step further and look like the person you wish you were? Why not drop a few hundred quid and feel like a Kardashian or Kanye for half an hour? If you take a picture, the experience might convince someone else it's true too. 

For people who want to take a shortcut to a lifestyle of fame and fortune, the concept of “fake it ’til you make it” leads to heavy-handed Photoshopping at one end of the spectrum, the temporary rental of luxury goods, services and venues somewhere in the middle and—driven by insecurity, narcissism or gullibility—pyramid schemes and criminal fraud at the other.

ChristianAdamG

According to Youtuber ChristanAdamG, “The logic behind it, bro? This faking it until you make it thing? It’s a serious thing, bro. It works, bro, for some reason.”

This was his conclusion after a social experiment last spring. He tried faking wealth on Instagram by using Photoshop—putting himself in a private jet, driving a supercar, photographing himself standing near celebrities—and, at the end of a bizarre week, landed a couple of thousand new followers. His video documenting that experience has more than 5.6 million views.

There’s a cottage industry of how-to guides that share tips for looking rich on Instagram, for example, a video titled “10 Ways to Look Expensive on a Budget” (1.5 million views) from a YouTube account called the School of Affluence. Most of the advice doesn’t require you to be a gifted photo editor. Just to be bold. For example, visit open houses to look like you live in a swanky place. When rapper Lil Tay emerged as an internet star at the age of nine, she was branded as a Louis Vuitton-wearing L.A. rich kid. In truth, her mother was a Vancouver estate agent with access to a penthouse.

Some advice is off-the-wall—take a toilet seat and make it look like you’re sitting by an airplane window. But some of it makes sense. Want to seem like you can afford a Hermes bag? Try one on at the store and take a picture. Just don’t buy it. Want to seem like you dine at high-end restaurants? Post Yelp reviews, with a #richkidsofinstagram hashtag on your posts for good measure.

Trying to appear successful on social media could be a way for people to feel better about themselves. If you look like you’re doing it, you feel like you’re doing it. Or it could just be the rush of positive feelings that can come from likes or comments.

There's a line however, between the fakers who are doing it for likes and maybe a free holiday, and the ones who cross the line into actual fraud.

People can buy fake audiences for their accounts in the range of US$10-15 per 1,000 followers. A 2019 study from CHEQ AI and the University of Baltimore predicted that influencers who bought followers or engagements from bot farms would swindle advertisers out of US$1.5 billion this year.

Outing the Flexoffenders

Fellow internet users do a good job outing and shaming people who are fabricating their wealth. It's not surprising that a new movement of those wanting to expose the fakers or #FlexOffenders has emerged. In February, an Instagram account called @BallerBusters cropped up and began wreaking havoc on the flashy Instagram entrepreneur community. Instagram and TikTok comments are rife with accusations of fakery.

BallerBusters regularly calls out entrepreneurs for showing off fake watches and posing in rented private jets.

However, it's main target are the 'snake oil salesmen of the itenernet. Supposed entrepeneurs who revel in flashy living on Tok Tok and Instagram and then try to sell their lifestyles to desperate young people through phoney workshops and courses. They pay thousands of dollars or pounds for courses that don't deliver their promise.

The person who runs the @BallerBusters account said they had heard from hundreds of people who believe they have been scammed. 

These teenagers know that making money on the internet is possible, and often they have friends who have done it. But they end up paying for bad advice.

These supposed 'entrepeneurs' film themselves "flaunting private planes, fake watches, posing with all this stuff and creating a life for themselves on social media that’s not true,” the administrator behind @BallerBusters said.

All these spoils can be yours, they promise — for a price.

It’s a lot of rented cars, ride-share jet company photos making it look like they own the jet.

Victims pay for bogus entrepreneurs’ courses and mentorship programs, or to be added to an Instagram account’s “close friends” stories circle — a private group that receives exclusive content.

Often these scammers don’t even teach their own classes. They create a script or slide show and hand it off to subcontractors. 

Anna Sorokin a.k.a Anna Delvey

Flexing gone wrong

Perhaps the most famous case of #FlexOffending is that of Anna Sorokin a.k.a Anna Delvey. For a few years she lived the kind of lavish lifestyle Instagram was made to record.

Even more impressive than the designer clothes, high end hotels and glamorous nights out she portrayed, however, was the way she paid for it all: in short, she didn’t. Instead she conned banks, wrote bad cheques and eventually took money from her friends as the lies and debts caught up with her.

Eventually it becomes a police matter. Anna was convicted in New York last year of theft and grand larceny for manipulating banks, hotels, a jet operator, restaurants and individuals out of more than US$200,000 using a fake identity she created online. Under the identity of Anna Delvey, a German heiress hoping to launch a SoHo House-type lavish art club in various hot spots around the country, Sorokin conned her newfound friends out of thousands of dollars while always promising to pay them back. One such friend was Rachel Williams, a young employee at Vanity Fair, who was stuck with a $60,000 bill for a glamorous trip to Marrakesh, Morocco. When Sorokin went on the lam, Williams and others start going after her and eventually got the police involved. In 2019, Sorokin was convicted on multiple charges, including second-degree grand larceny and theft of services.Anna, who was in fact, a Russian immigrant posing as a German heiress, was sentenced to at least four years in prison.

During his opening statement, Sorokin’s lawyer Todd Spodek said there’s a bit of Anna in everyone. “Through her sheer ingenuity, she created the life that she wanted for herself,” he said. “Anna was not content with being a spectator, but wanted to be a participant. Anna didn’t wait for opportunities, Anna created opportunities. Now we can all relate to that.”

Spodek invoked Frank Sinatra and the dream of climbing to the top of the heap: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere!”

Anna claimed it wasn't about the money for her, but rather about power. This appears to be the case in the most outlandish cases. It is about money on the surface, but in many cases,  money is just the starting point and it becomes about something bigger and deeper and more complicated, whether it’s identity or class or fame or status. Being somebody that you’re not, has always captured the imagination.

Con-Artist Anna Sorokin, released from prison

 

New York State Department of Corrections records say she was released Thursday from the Albion Correctional Facility in upstate New York. A source familiar with Sorokin's situation confirmed to Insider that she had been released.

In May 2019, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison on charges related to a scheme where she pretended to be a millionaire German heiress named Anna Delvey to take money from banks and other financial institutions.

Her sentence included the time she had spent in jail on Rikers Island ahead of her trial and was shortened for good behavior. Sorokin was merit released to parole, according to Department of Corrections records.

Sorokin created a new Twitter account after her release using the name Anna Delvey. She tweeted the Manhattan District Attorney's press release about her conviction.

"Good job @ManhattanDA," she wrote.

Insider reported last month that Sorokin had paid restitution to her victims using $320,000 she received from Netflix, which is producing a limited series about her time as a fake heiress.

She is also appealing the charges against her despite her release from prison. Sorokin's attorneys say that the money she owed to banks amounted to a civil dispute and does not rise to the level of a crime.

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