Adventurer who lost leg says 'don't send me money'

An adventurer who lost a leg in a motorbike crash has warned people not to send money in response to social media messages from someone pretending to be him.

Luke Tarrant, 30, from Bedford, who has more than 770,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, said he was "disgusted" and extremely angry after discovering someone had being scammed into transferring their life savings to a fake Facebook page.

He said the page had been created in his name with private messages asking if people had "anything you can spare" as "things have been a bit difficult lately".

Tarrant said he reported it to Meta, which owns the site. The company confirmed the page had been removed "for violating our policies".

Tarrant posted his annoyance on his Instagram page to warn people that others had been stealing his videos and posting them on fake accounts.

He said: "If you're speaking to me on Facebook, stop right now, do not send any money."

He said he is bad at responding to direct messages and had been alerted to the issue by his girlfriend and his gym.

They told him a woman had transferred her life savings to someone she thought was him and was left totally embarrassed.

He said money was raised for him by his gym in 2024 when he lost his leg while travelling through South America, but the fundraiser was quickly taken down when he didn't need any more money.

The only other time he has asked for money was when he fundraised for care, support and specialist equipment for gold medal Paralympian, David Smith who has terminal cancer.

He said as his following has grown on social media, so have the fake accounts pretending to be him.

"I keep reporting them, they get taken down but it seems to take forever, it should be easier to get them taken down."

Tarrant said he was also aware of AI being used to impersonate his voice in messages and videos and it was "scary".

He said: "If you are ever asked for money online or are chatting to someone with a public profile, have a second thought.

"This is the new way that's smarter at impersonating people, we all need a new level of awareness we didn't need before. Please be careful."

A spokesperson for Meta said: "Scammers are relentless and continuously evolve their tactics to try to evade detection, which is why we're constantly developing new ways to make it harder for scammers to deceive others.

"Last year alone we took down more than 159 million scam ads with over 92% detected proactively before anyone reported them.

"We also removed 10.9 million accounts associated with criminal scam centres.

"We've built additional detection models, specifically for celeb-bait, that automatically incorporate what we have learned about the changing tactics used in ads to help us improve."

A spokesperson for Bedfordshire Police advised people to be vigilant when approached by online accounts alleging to be public figures or friends.

They said: "Scammers can easily create convincing false profiles, which are built to use trusted relationships to manipulate people into sending money, bank details or vouchers."

The spokesperson advised people to read the force's online safety guides.

Report Fraud said if anyone is asked for money by someone they have recently started speaking with online, it should be warning sign.

The organisation said anyone who believes they have been a victim should report it online or call 0300 123 2040.

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