moistcr1tikal Vs The Instagram Imposter

Someone's gonna get thumped. You hear the odd person say "You mess with the bull, you're gonna get the horns" and that's pretty much what I think when penguinz0 (aka moistcr1tikal or simply as Charlie to most) relates this latest story about identity theft. If you follow him on Twitch or YouTube, you probably know he's not one you trifle with lightly. Here's a quick peek at his moistcr1tikal stream on Twitch where he's got over 5 million followers. And with that penguinz0 channel he's no slouch either, amassing between 16-17 million subs.

But this isn't a blog post to brag about how many followers someone has, its about ID theft and it happens to the big boys and the small fry.

First, take a quick look at the following video entitled "I Didn't Realize How Big This Problem Was" as Charlie fills you in on someone impersonating him on Instagram using his alias moistcr1tikal on that platform to hoodwink his followers and friends with an apparently "verified account" no less.

Luckily it seems that all the content that was displayed on the site was scrubbed, deleted or "banished to the shadow realm" as Charlie says when whoever was running the con realized Charlie was taking an up close look at what they were doing. Some kinda shady shite.

As you can hear him, whoever was pretending to be him was possibly taking money from sponsorships as well as paid subscriptions or even doing some kind of crypto shenanigans or "rug pulls".

The guy also had paid subscriptions on the linked TikTok account with links to merch like t-shirts and Pokémon cards.
Very entrepreneurial, my man.

Charlie also jokingly suggests (at around 3 and a half minutes into the video) even one of his friends, another prominent fellow Twitch streamer, Ludwig Ahgren, likely had been duped into following the fake moistcr1tikal account.

Ludwig himself has almost three and a half million followers on his Twitch channel and several "unaffiliated" YouTube channels that follow his content have clips from his stream if you want to check those out, although (sidenote) Ludwig recently posted a video where he said he might copywrite strike some of these offenders, but that's a blog post for another day.

Getting back to the topic at hand, a clip from a recent Ludwig Twitch Stream was posted on YouTube by an unauthorized account (the irony is not lost on me) called Baldwig, which I somehow found first, but then I found it again, posted to Ludwig Clips "official" channel on YouTube where he sorta, kinda admits he was following the Instagram Imposter. Here's that video which will give you some more details.

I like that the top comment on the video jokingly suggests that Ludwig probably was running the accounts. Luckily for Charlie, it looks like whoever was behind the scam folded up shop and skipped town, but even though Charlie takes a bit of a lax attitude towards those who surreptitiously try to make buck or two off his content and his name, they are still out there and will likely try this kind of scam again and again.

You can bet it has happened before and will happen again.

There are lots of big names out there and there are always lots of guys like this who will try to shave off a few dollars from those he feels are the next rubes, fools and idiots who will gladly fall for their scams.

Again, gentle reader, its always a case of buyer beware.