Actor Chris Carmack and his wife, musician Erin Slaver, are speaking out about navigating several online scams in recent months, including being among many people who “lost thousands of dollars” in orders from a fake seller.
“We moved to our new house and I was trying to furnish everything on a budget. I found custom cushions on this platform and I thought, ‘Oh, these are affordable. I can get exactly what I want,’” Slaver recalled to Us Weekly during a joint interview with Carmack. “I started DMing with someone who worked for the company and she sent me a link to pay. I clicked on the link, took me off this platform, I gave my credit card info and paid. That was my mistake. I waited for months and months and she strung me along. I would send messages like, ‘Is my order coming? Is everything OK?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, we’re out of the fabric, there’s a delay.’ Three months after that, I was sending messages and they said, ‘Oh, the factory’s moving, so there’s more delays.’ And then, finally, one day her account disappeared.”
“It was really sad, and it is shocking that it could happen so fast and so easily,” she continued. “It certainly made Chris and I aware of how prevalent these scams and how smart they’re getting.”
The Grey’s Anatomy star noted “custom cushions are not cheap” — but it wasn’t just the money that affected them. “We spent a lot of time discussing it, like, ‘Is this a purchase right for our family?’ That time was robbed from us like the money was. It’s a very vulnerable feeling to be the victim of a scam.There’s an emotional toll,” he said.
Carmack and Slaver, who wed in 2018, share two kids. “We don’t get enough sleep. We’re running them from activity to activity. We got 15 schedules in our head,” he added. “It is far too easy to get a convenient link sent to you and say, ‘Oh, I need to take care of this and click on it.'”
The couple were open about the stress the scam brought to their relationship.
“It didn’t necessarily affect our relationship in the long-term, but it brought a lot of discord into our house and a lot of stress. Erin [was] particularly worried and angry because you were victimized by this person. And, of course I was the perfect supportive husband in this scenario,” Carmack told Us with a hint of sarcasm. “That’s time and energy taken away from our family and our kids. I don’t need to be spending a night at the dinner table getting angry or [experiencing] elevated blood pressure about some jerk online that stole our money. I don’t wanna spend my life doing that. It affected our lives.”
Slaver added, “There were lots of good reviews and I could see pictures of the product people had ordered. It’s definitely embarrassing, but it also feels like I could have done everything right and still gotten scammed. That’s why you need a scam detector in today’s world.”
Carmack and Slaver have subsequently teamed up with McAfee for the Keep It Real moment and McAfee Scam Detector launch. “It automatically filters through all of your stuff. It tells about suspicious links. You can feed a screenshot of a communication — with an online seller or a DM — it will analyze the communication and reveal if it seems like it could be a scam,” he explained. “And it’ll give you the reasons, whether it’s the pushy language they used or a sketchy link that they’ve sent.”
In addition to the online shopping scam, the pair have had several near misses when it comes to scams. Carmack described nearly falling for a bogus “unpaid toll” after a family road trip in Florida. He also has had to inform his fans not to interact with “deepfakes” who are impersonating him on the internet.
“As an actor, I’ve spent many years in the public eye and I have built a reputation with my fans through the work I’ve done and also through the interactions we’ve had online. Me and Erin spend a lot of time doing social media and getting to know a lot of the people. All it takes is one bad actor to train AI to have my face asking fans for money because ‘I’m sick’ or have ‘medical bills’ or I”ve been scammed out of all my money,’ whatever it is,” he said. “That’s a really scary place to be and we should all be very skeptical and never send money to anyone unless we are 100 percent sure where it’s coming from. I can guarantee I’m not gonna be sending videos of myself to my fans asking them for money.”
To learn more, submit your own scam story, or get protected today, visit https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/scam-stories. To learn more about McAfee’s Scam Detector and how to protect yourself, visit https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/scam-detector.
