Kate Beckinsale has never minced words — and won’t start now for a thief using her name.
The “Underworld” star is warning her social media followers about a catfish pretending to be her in order to scam people out of money. Beckinsale, who shared screenshots from multiple fans who say their parents were targeted, addressed the issue Tuesday.
“Hey so this is such a shitty horrible thing to do and it’s not the first time an elderly man has been scammed out of actually a lot of money ― hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she captioned her Instagram post. “Whoever is doing this is disgusting and evil.”
The “Serendipity” actor emphasized that “any message pretending to [be] me is a scammer and I will never be dming anyone asking for money.”
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center recently confirmed that elder fraud complaints increased by 14% last year, and noted that “scams targeting individuals aged 60 or older caused over $3.4 billion in losses” in 2023 alone — with the average victim losing $33,915.
Beckinsale shared a glimpse of just how manipulative these scammers are. One of the messages she shared on Instagram came from a concerned daughter who said her “elderly dad is being scammed out of lots of money” and “does not believe” he’s a victim.
The other message went as far as mentioning Beckinsale’s daughter, Lily Mo Sheen.
Lionel Hahn via Getty Images
“He is convinced that Kate proposed to him via text… and that she and Lily are coming out soon to pay him a visit,” another Instagram user said of their father. “The news article about the catfished stalkers that forced Kate to move homes didn’t help.”
Beckinsale was indeed forced to move after several catfish victims who thought she had invited them harassed her at home over the course of several weeks in 2021. The actor reportedly later explained that the deceived harassers thought they “were in some sort of relationship” with her.
“My boyfriend at the time and I were completely freaked out, the catfished guys were humiliated and some of them arrested, the scammers weren’t caught and I ended up ultimately having to move house,” she wrote on Instagram in 2023, per The Independent.
“So long story short,” she concluded, “if you think I’m messaging you, it’s not me.”