Actor, Mike Godson, recently put up a post on his Instagram page where he revealed that the police had arrested an impersonator who was using his name to obtain money fraudulently from fans. Some of his followers felt that he should have let the culprit go but the actor didn’t take kindly to that.
However, in a chat with Sunday Scoop, he admitted that he felt bad for getting the impersonator arrested. He said, “I am completely short of words but I just feel like things like that cannot be curbed because it has happened so many times and the people involved were apprehended and some of them were even sent to jail but it still continued. We don’t have any choice but to keep telling people out there to be careful of these cyber criminals who go about defrauding people.”
He added, “Before this present case, there have been others and someone was actually sent to jail. I feel bad about taking the matter to the police because these guys are young. The one that was recently caught is actually a 400 level student of Theatre and Media Arts at the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma; he has his exams to take very soon. It is quite unfortunate that it happened that way. The mother was crying and there are a lot of things that happened that I cannot disclose because I’m not supposed to. The point is that he has been apprehended by the police and the police are taking care of the matter.”
On if he may be persuaded to have a rethink if the family of the alleged culprit plead for mercy, Godson said, “It depends on the situation. That’s why the police make provisions for undertaking and things like that. When people like that are apprehended, the Police either put them in jail or make them give a written undertaking not to do such things again but in this case, we are still with the police and we are not done yet. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Explaining how incidents like this have affected his brand, Mike said, “It is very obvious that the actions of these cyber criminals affect our brand. They usually follow us on social media and are aware of our activities, so they post our images and videos on their fake pages. They then use those media to defraud our fans and because of how good they are, some of our fans actually fall for their deceit. However, I think it’s only a fool that will believe that celebrities who are so busy would have the time to call people on WhatsApp and Facebook to ask for money. I just feel like these fans are also gullible and greedy. If they do not want something, I don’t think they would end up being defrauded.”
Reacting to claims that impersonators have a field day cheating fans because celebrities don’t interact with their fans online, Godson said, “I don’t think that’s right. Celebrities are often very busy. For example, whenever we go on set, we are always very busy and we don’t even have time for our phones. You don’t expect us to always be online chatting with fans; that’s not possible. I’m not saying celebs cannot do that but it has to be at their convenience. However, there is no reason for cybercrime. It is very wrong to impersonate someone else. It is a dent in our brands.”
Refusing to react to insinuations of being a sex symbol, Godson said, “I don’t know about that. I’m just a hard-working young man.”
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