Von Contzen said he sees this scam play out over and over again. He even fell for it once.

A year and a half ago, von Contzen was running a luxury-lifestyle-themed Instagram account with nearly 300,000 followers when someone reached out about a collaboration opportunity with several brands, some of which were well known for reaching out to influencers directly. “I was super young and inexperienced, so I was really excited,” von Contzen said. He logged in to the Instagram analytics tool the “brand representative” had provided. “It all looked legit. But as soon as I logged in and gave my password, I went back in to my Instagram and bam—my Instagram was gone, and that was that.”

For young influencers with no direct contacts at Instagram or Facebook, it can be nearly impossible to retrieve a stolen account. Hackers will change the contact email address and phone number, and reset the username so the account is impossible to find. Then they’ll run ads on it until they can sell the whole page off for a large price, sometimes for more than $100,000.

Faisal Shafique, a college student who Instagrams under the handle @Fact, said he earns roughly $300,000 a year from posting sponsored content for brands like TikTok and Fashion Nova. When Brooks seized control of his account several weeks ago, it put those brand deals in jeopardy, potentially costing Shafique his livelihood. Shafique was able to retrieve his account before it was sold off, but he estimates that he would have lost a half a million dollar property if he hadn’t.

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Rachel Taton wasn’t so lucky. She began posting to an account called @BestScenes five years ago. By 2014, it had grown to become one of the largest meme pages on Instagram. Two years ago, she lost it to a hacker. Brooks’s particular scheme hadn’t taken hold yet, but she thinks someone obtained her password through other means. Throughout the years, she’s watched helplessly as her old account has changed owners, changed names, and run sponsored content for major brands. It’s now operating under the handle @FunStuff with 1.3 million followers.

“I realized how fast everything could be taken away from me,” Taton said. Shortly after her account was stolen, she quit the influencer game. “I realized that my priority should be focusing on a real job, something that can’t be taken away from me,” she said.

All the influencers I spoke to said brands have a responsibility to be more diligent about who they work with. Greg owns a network of Instagram pages with 50 million followers and asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to protect his clients. He said he’s seen several campaigns from mainstream brands running on pages that he knows to be stolen.

But, he added, the brands themselves likely don’t realize this. Many rely on third-party media-buying or advertising agencies to negotiate the terms of sponsored-content deals across the whole Instagram market. Sometimes a brand will vet particular pages, but Toda said that happens “very rarely.”