Instagram model Lucas Escarcello has his account hacked twice in two days

WHEN Lucas Escarcello moved to Sydney earlier this month, it was supposed to be the start of something new and exciting.

Leaving his home country of Brazil on April 6, Lucas happily told his nearly 30,000 Instagram followers about the move.

But less than three weeks after leaving Rio de Janeiro, the popular model’s account was hacked.

Lucas managed to gain access again but the day after, April 23, he was hacked again — and hasn’t been able to access his account since.

The model’s entire life and business model is built around his Instagram account meaning Lucas is currently living in one of the world’s most expensive cities on a casual income from construction work he’s managed to pick up.

Despite Lucas’ desperation, the model is yet to receive any concrete help from Instagram.

“I wrote a lot messages to Instagram but they just replied with weird answers, general replies and a lot of times they just didn’t reply at all,” he told news.com.au.

“I’m feeling really disappointed, disrespected and sad with Inst agram. How sensitive and unsafe is this platform?”

It can often take users weeks to re-access hacked accounts by going through a number of verification checks.

But, as Lucas has learnt, it’s becoming increasingly common for hackers to extort the desperate users instead.

After making a number of online pleas to get his account back, a Brazilian web developer got in touch with and said he’d be able to recover the account — for a price.

Lucas believes the man who approached him with the offer works for a crime group in Brazil and is actually extorting him under the guise of help.

“They’re criminals, it’s so disrespectful,” he said.

Lucas had been trying for a week to reaccess his account through Instagram but gave up yesterday — paying the $1000 to the hacker.

“You spend years building a business and a person just presses a button and deletes all your life,” he said.

“They said I have to wait five business days to get access again but I’m nervous they’ll just take the money and delete it.

“I couldn’t see any other solution, if they delete my page and f**k up my life I guess I’ll just have to start from the beginning. Start a hashtag like #GoodPeopleAlwaysWin or something.”

Instagram warns users about hackers — encouraging accounts to have two-step verifications and difficult passwords.

Lucas said he took all of those measures, and was still hacked.

“I had security in place, I’d need a code sent to my phone to access my account but they still got in. It’s hard because they’re from Brazil so it’s not like I can start a case with the police here,” he said.

Every week, Lucas typically receives several invites on Instagram to do model shoots or do sponsored posts with a company’s brands but he hasn’t had any inquiries for a week.

The Brazilian model said he could often earn up to $2000 for a single shoot — jobs he’s scored through his Instagram profile.

The 2017 Norton Cybersecurity Insights Report for Australia shows hackers stole $2.3 billion from Aussie consumers in a year — that puts us above the global average.

Lucas’ hacker however appears to be from Brazil — their only post celebrating the cybercrime was written in Portuguese.

Cyber security expert Ty Miller, of Threat Intelligence, told the Sydney Morning Herald, hackers were getting “very opportunistic” as they realise the amount of money that can be made.

“Social media account hacking, including Instagram, is big business these days, since hackers can make a lot of money through compromised accounts,” Mr Miller said.

Melbourne fashion blogger Rozalia Russian, with more than 200,000 followers, also fell victim to a hacker when they staged a “takeover” of her account.

Similar to Lucas, Rozalia’s entire livelihood was based on her Instagram account when she was hacked in April 2016.

Ms Russian told the Sydney Morning Heraldshe eventually decided to hire an IT guru who tracked the hacker to a college dorm in the US.

After speaking on the phone and pleading with the hacker, he asked her: “What’s in it for me?”

Ms Russian figured out a friend of hers, a travel blogger followed by more than a million people, had also been hacked.

They both came to an agreement to pay a combined $5000 to the hacker via PayPal and were eventually able to access their accounts again.

Like Lucas, Ms Russian received no response from Instagram when asking for help.

In August last year, the company was forced to own up to a massive security breach after a hacker found a bug in the service’s back end and accessed a number of “high-profile” accounts including those of Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Emma Watson.

In total, six million accounts were exposed online.

“We recently discovered that one or more individuals obtained unlawful access to a number of high-profile Instagram users’ contact information — specifically email address and phone number — by exploiting a bug in an Instagram API,” a rep said in a statement at the time.

Selena Gomez, the most followed person on Instagram, was one of the victims, resulting in several nude photos of Justin Bieber being posted to her account for her 125 million followers to see.

Instagram helped Gomez resecure her account after it was hacked.

— News.com.au has contacted Instagram for comment

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