Oprah Defends Her Name From Scammers On Instagram

There are things that are so obviously scam that they shouldn’t need to be clarified in 2022. If you’ve never left the country but that Nigerian official desperately needs your bank routing number and password, don’t answer the email. Choose better friends if the people in your phone actually hit you up about joining a sou-sou or any manner of multi-level marketing in the last decade. And by all means, don’t hit up Oprah Winfrey asking about diet pills.

The billionaire media entrepreneur was forced to make a rare appearance on her own social media today to refute a scam that apparently too many of her fans have been taken by. Apparently, someone’s been using her name to peddle “weight-loss gummies” to the extent that random fans are approaching Oprah on the street to ask where the stash is. As you can imagine, this does not sit well with Lady O.

“Fraud alert! Please don’t buy any weight loss gummies with my picture or name on them,” she said. “There have been social media ads, emails, and fake websites going out and I want you to hear it straight from me, that I have nothing to do with them. Please don’t be taken advantage of and don’t give your personal information to them.”

To which I can only respond by saying, “C’mon fam.” Who in this day and age is still being taken by these scams? Who actually believes that Oprah Winfrey, arguably the most successful person in her field of the last 40 years, waited until the sunset of her brilliant career to license her name and image for quackery?

OK, she did introduce us to Dr. Oz, who before pretending to live in Pennsylvania so he could run for U.S. Senate spent so much time on his TV show pushing scam diet pills that that same senate actually called him to testify about it, so there’s that.

The real shame isn’t that there are still people liable to fall for obviously fake scams; it’s that the scammers have become so effective at exploiting people’s insecurities to sell their junk. How better to sell candy that’s supposed to help with weight loss than to invoke the name of a celebrity with a huge audience who was public about her own journey with weight loss and body image? Oprah’s message of empowerment, of seizing the moment and living your best life, resonates with millions. If Oprah can do it, I can too!

And if diet gummies is how some guy on the internet says she got there? Sign me up.