By Stephanie Lyew – STAR Writer—
Bounty Killer—
Dancehall recording artiste Bounty Killer has been fighting a battle against scammers silently over the years, but, on the weekend, he and his manager/veteran producer Paul ‘Bankeylous’ Giscombe issued a warning that the impersonators need to cease and desist.
“It’s a lot of persons and pages on social media scamming people of their money, selling merchandise and all those things,” Bankeylous told THE STAR. “They collect money and I don’t know if they really exchange anything for it but the pages are fake. It’s sad that people work their hard money and it just go like that.”
The veteran music professionals have identified several pages that have allegedly tried to solicit money on behalf of Bounty Killer, whose given name is Rodney Price. They have sought the legal advice of Christopher Townsend with a view to pursue legal action, whether civil or criminal, against parties that falsely purport their affiliation with them or are impersonating them.
Bounty Killer and Bankeylous are advising persons to look carefully at pages purporting to belong to the artiste or any member of his team.
“What I don’t understand is why is it when they get scammed, that is when they find the real page to complain? People out there should be careful,” Bankeylous warned.
According to Townsend, scamming is not new, and the nature of it, he said, “is such that it will catch persons who are not as astute or do not pay attention, whatever percentage, whether small or large.”
“There is another percentage that is preyed upon where persons will solicit under a page pretending to be them. I myself have suffered the same fate where a fake page was made and persons solicit pretending to be me. I reported it and it was removed,” he shared with THE STAR.
As it relates to the next step in the pages that are impersonating Bounty Killer and Bankeylous, Townsend explained that if reporting them does not assist with having them removed, the next step is to report the matter to the Cybercrimes Unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
“It is not widely known, but they have treaties with other countries to deal with issues like these if it is cross-border and if it is not cross-border, they do have the wherewithal [in] policing these things that scammers do. People believe they are not identifiable but everything can be traced and we will be reporting it to Cybercrimes. We are making the fan base aware and ask that they do their part in disseminating the information so it goes out fast enough so more people [can] become aware of what’s happening and report the page or pages,” Townsend said.
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