Gabby Petito Scammers Are On The Loose On Instagram!

Gabby Petito’s legacy has being sabotaged by some greedy thieves.

The slain 22-year-old’s family has been on a mission to do right by Gabby and all domestic violence victims since her tragic passing over a year ago.

Her parents, Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt, founded “The Gabby Petito Foundation” in honor of their daughter.

The foundation’s mission states: “The mission of the foundation is to address the needs of organizations that support locating missing persons and to provide aid to organizations that assist victims of domestic violence situations, through education, awareness, and prevention strategies.”

Petito and Schmidt are turning their personal tragedy into a positive, and they’ve kept their word.

Sadly, there are very greedy and malicious people online who are trying to benefit from Gabby’s family’s kindness.

Petito recently shared a series of Instagram direct messages from what appears to be him or Schmidt asking people to donate money for a mural of Gabby.

One supposed message from Petito read, “Hi! this is Joseph, Gabby father. My wife gave me your number & said you were interested in donating towards gabby mural. We deeply appreciate you &. Your thoughts being with us during this time.”

As you can see, there are multiple spelling and grammatical errors in the message.

The innocent bystander and supporter responded, “Yes! I would love to !! I am speaking with. Her now and I told her I’d love to spread the word about the donations, if that is ok with you guys, it touched everyone at my old job about it so I’m sure they would love to help as well! I moved to florida 5 months ago but still keep in touch with them.”

Another photo shows the person donated $20 via Apple Pay.

“Thank you! May I ask what’s your name so I can write it down?” the message from Petito read.

However, this was not actually Joseph Petito interacting with the donor, it was a SCAMMER.

The actual Joseph Petito captioned the carousel of screenshots, “This is the account trying to scam people on #instagram and it this kind of stuff that’s make me sick. We would never do this. #scammers suck!!!”

Other screenshots show the impostor saying the goal for the mural is $147.00 and asking for donations.

They were also pretending to be Gabby’s mother in the messages.

“Hi I am gabby mother nichole 💜 We are trying to put up Gabby a mural. If you were interested in donating to help support it would be highly appreciated & wholeheartedly heartwarming 💜 we. are writing names on the mural for those who are contributing as well,” the scam message read.

The person on the other end believed it to be Schmidt and agreed to donate. No amount was shown for that particular donation.

Schmidt also spoke out about the scammers.

“Twitter fam, just a heads up.. someone is trying scam money in my name. I will NEVER message anyone asking for donations, ever! Please share, people are awful,” she tweeted.

On September 7, Schmidt shared the same screenshots and noted the IG handle is @gaby__petito.

Petito’s followers were absolutely furious about this and sounded off in his comments section.

“You can totally tell by the broken English this is a scam. Be diligent friends,” one person warned.

Another person echoed this sentiment writing, “Never, ever, trust anyone that messages you for money on any app/site (that you don't 100% know). Most organizations, companies, or people, don't direct message people for money.”

“What kind of person would do such a thing……as if the family doesn’t have enough to deal with,” another commented.

One commenter was actually targeted by the scammers.

“I got this message too, and just had a bad feeling. I'm so sorry people are taking advantage,” they shared.

If you or anyone you know is the target or victim of a social media scam, here are the steps to report it on Instagram.

1. Open the conversation in the Instagram app.
2. Tap in the top right.
3. Tap Report at the bottom. ...
4. Select a reason for why you're reporting the message, then follow the on-screen instructions.
5. Tap Submit Report

Stay safe and be diligent when using social media.