Hackers may be mass-reporting Instagram accounts and charging users thousands to restore them.
Dozens of people have claimed this month on X and Meta’s help forum that their Instagram or Facebook profiles have been banned ’for no reason’, often blaming Meta’s AI-powered moderation.
But suspended users have told Metro that their inboxes have since been flooded with so-called ‘digital asset recovery experts’ charging them a fee to recover their accounts.
Metro has seen Telegram con artists claim they know people within Meta, called ‘reps’, who can restore accounts, or use AI-generated videos of success stories to gain victims’ trust.
One user said on Monday that they had recovered 160 accounts in the last week, charging up to $4,000 so they can ‘afford chicken masala’.
‘Yo [Instagram] can you let the Ai disable some accounts by mistake again please ok ? Thanks <3 ❤️’ they added.
Among the suspended Instagram users is Heisenberg, whose eight-year-old Instagram account was locked in May.
He denies any wrongdoing, adding: ‘The most frustrating part was not being given a clear explanation or a meaningful way to appeal the decision.
‘It often felt like I was receiving copy-pasted responses rather than having my case individually reviewed.’
While posting about the situation on X, a user messaged him claiming he is ‘partnered with Meta and can get direct human escalation on cases’.
For $5,000, he offered to reboot Heisenberg’s Instagram with a ‘five-year insurance’ that he wouldn’t lose it again, according to the screenshots seen by Metro.
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When Heisenberg pressed the scammer for proof, he replied with a voice note saying he had ‘no badge’.
But he boasted that he is a ‘secret weapon’ for influencers and can add them to a ‘white list’ of accounts that should never be terminated.
Heisenberg declined the user’s offer. Meta has since reactivated Heisenberg’s account after he filed an appeal through official channels.
Sanjana Bandara’s nine-year-old account was locked on June 5 after Meta AI found it ‘didn’t follow our rules’.
He has since struggled with the appeals process, and each post about it on X has been met with near-identical responses.
‘Suspended users appear to be actively targeted by scammers almost immediately after posting publicly about their cases,’ he said.
‘I believe there is an established underground industry dedicated to scamming people whose accounts have been suspended.’
Scammers are reporting Instagram users to ‘lure them’
Most of the ex-Instagram users Metro spoke with said their accounts were tied to their jobs or contained years of memories.
They have made similar reports to Social Media Experts LTD. It received 1,500 enquiries related to Instagram account issues in May, up 40% from March.
‘The difficult part for users is that they often get very little detail from Meta, and the appeal process can be quite limited,’ a spokesperson said.
In other words, scammers are pouncing on victims at their most ‘vulnerable’, said Marijus Briedis, the chief technology officer at cyber privacy firm NordVPN.
Most ‘tech support scams’ play out the same way: Pay upfront, the scammer disappears before demanding more money, all while asking for personal information they claim is needed to reactivate the account.
‘If any third party is claiming they can influence account recovery from the inside, that is not a legitimate customer service route,’ Briedis said. ‘This would be a serious abuse of trust and should be reported to Meta.’
These third parties could be the reason victims are banned in the first place, warned Pieter Arntz, of the cybersecurity company Malwarebytes.
Arntz said digital scammers may be carrying out bot-driven mass-report campaigns to force Instagram’s automated systems to ban accounts.
‘It’s very feasible that scammers would specifically contact a banned victim or throw out a wider web to lure victims into “tech support scam” operations,’ he added.
Metro saw one Telegram page share a video in April showing an ‘ig ban exploit’ that could falsely ban an account within minutes.
By June, the user was offering to unban accounts for $400.
What should I do if my Instagram account has been disabled?
Here’s what Briedis and Arntz recommend:
- Appeal to Instagram’s in-app or help centre recovery path as soon as possible.
- Always make sure you are communicating with Instagram/Meta and not third parties.
- Document everything: screenshots of the disabled notice, usernames involved, timestamps, and any suspicious messages or coordinated harassment.
- Secure the account if access is still possible: change the password, enable two-factor authentication and review login activity for unfamiliar sessions.
- Don’t pay anyone or give anyone access to your device.
- If you did pay, contact your bank and report the scam. Credit card payments may be recoverable.
Meta began testing AI-powered content enforcement last year, with early changes proving ‘positive’.
The company, which also owns WhatsApp, said in March that it would roll out a more advanced AI model over the coming years.
The software will remove content about terrorism, child exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams and make fewer over-enforcement mistakes.
Yet Aras Nazarovas, a senior information security researcher atCybernews, worries that tech companies are becoming overly reliant on AI.
‘In this rush to introduce new AI capabilities, security testing can sometimes be overlooked,’ Nazarovas said, ‘which can allow attackers to exploit weaknesses that should have been identified before launch.’
Meta and X have been approached for comment.
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