General Hospital’s Steve Burton has offered a warning to fans after he’s been left ‘heartbroken’ following hearing how some have been duped out of thousands of dollars in scams using his face and name
General Hospital star Steve Burton has shared a warning to fans after scammers have been “rampant” in using his name and face to earn thousands.
Speaking to Bradford Anderson, the soap actor told how he had been left “heartbroken” after hearing from fans how they had been conned out of money via scammers who duped them into believing they were speaking with the star.
In August last year, the real Steve Burton warned on Instagram that he does not “reach out personally to fans” and to “beware of scammers” but the scams have continued.
Speaking on The Daily Drama podcast, Burton told listeners: “There’s a multitude of scams going on. We’ve all heard of the elderly being scammed saying ‘Hey you’ve won all this money, all you gotta do is pay the taxes up front and send $20,000 here and we’re going to give you a million dollars’. There’s a multitude of these that are targeted for seniors.”
He added: “Listen to me. Anytime anyone asks for money it’s a red flag. We’re going to get into if it seems too good to be true it’s too good to be true, but in my case that we’re going to be discussing it’s become more rampant with impersonation or imposters of celebrities.”
The podcast continued as Burton explained how he had met fans that have been scammed out of thousands of dollars believing they are speaking or connecting with him, when in fact they’re being duped by scammers.
He explained how some fans have parted ways with $7,000 and even $70,000 believing they have a close relationship with the General Hospital star.
Burton had some sage advice for listeners as he warned: “These are predators playing on people’s emotions and looking at their profiles going ‘oh this is a widow’ or ‘she’s just recently divorced’ and now I have a way in.
They’re not stupid because they’re making money.” Anderson then warned that actors, representatives and assistants of famous people are not reaching out on social media platforms like Facebook as well as giving a checklist of red flags to watch out for.
The warning comes after Burton has also excited fans as he teased a return to General Hospital, as he revealed he would be back on screen after his exit in 2020.
During a recent chat with co-star Bradford Anderson, Steve shared a rough start date, telling fans that he could be back on screens in three to four weeks time. He said: “We can do some creative, fuzzy-ish math.
I don’t know how far ahead GH is right now, but I can guess in my experience in life that it could be 3-4 weeks. But if I start in a couple of weeks, and we add four weeks to that, we’re going to have an estimated guess.”