Scotland’s oldest Playboy model Stephanie Heaney recently discovered her glamorous pictures are being used to scam men on Tinder and Hinge after victims contacted her
Stephanie Heaney opened up about the scam (Image: Stephanie Heaney)
Scotland’s oldest Playboy model has shared that her glamorous photographs are being exploited to deceive men on dating platforms including Tinder and Hinge.
Stephanie Heaney, the-41 year-old Glaswegian mum once in a relationship with Rangers favourite Nacho Novo, expressed her distress over what she described as a “horrible” scam that “violates” her privacy. She also said “sorry” to those who have fallen victim.
The model has been approached by men from across England who were duped by the fraudulent profiles, prompting her to urge dating app companies to enhance user protection measures.
One individual who was deceived contacted her via direct message, explaining: “Evening, I don’t use Facebook but wanted to reactivate this to drop you a message to say I was speaking with you yesterday on Tinder. They had this name, said you own your own beauty business and then asked a lot about my job and what I earn and whether I can keep up with someone high maintenance.”
The conversation abruptly ended when he suggested moving their chat to Facebook, leading him to discover that Stephanie’s images were being misused without her consent.
Stephanie is a Playboy model (Image: Stephanie Heaney)
Speaking with the Daily Record, Stephanie revealed that three men had contacted her within a single week reporting similar experiences, detailing how they had engaged in extensive, multi-day conversations with accounts they mistakenly thought belonged to her.
Reacting to the situation, she expressed her surprise, saying: “I was a bit shocked to be honest that these men fell for it. My profile is mostly professional pictures so not the usual type I guess you would see on these dating apps and I really do feel bad for them.
“Obviously men and women are out there looking to meet someone to date and try to find love and they are wasting time on fake profiles. If anyone matches with me on these dating apps I’m so sorry but I have never been on any dating apps or any other apps and I won’t be in the future.
“I think meeting and connecting with someone is more authentic and real in person. However, I do understand that can be difficult for lots of people and it genuinely makes me feel truly bad for them if they have been tricked and scammed online.”
Having experienced this before, Stephanie, who joined Playboy at 38, emphasised that no one has the right to misuse her online photos. She has since issued a warning on social media, urging anyone who spots her name or images on Tinder or Hinge to report the profiles.
One of the messages Stephanie received (Image: Stephanie Heaney)
She expressed her disbelief at how easily her photos could be misappropriated for malicious intent, describing it as “absolutely crazy”.
In conclusion, she called for greater responsibility from companies to prevent such incidents: “Most people I encounter online are generally lovely people so there are kind decent people in the UK but that small minority do horrible things like scam and manipulate others. These companies should be doing more to stop it.”
Addressing allegations raised in this article, a Tinder spokesperson stated: “Catfishing is a violation of Tinder’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, and users who are discovered catfishing are removed from our platform.”
They continued: “We encourage all users to use our Verification tools, which use a multi-step verification system to help confirm a user is the person in their profile. If violations are detected and flagged, our team will manually review to verify or proactively remove the account.
The glamorous mum has 76,300 followers on Instagram (Image: Stephanie Heaney)
“We encourage anyone who believes they are being impersonated on the app to contact our support team so we can review and take appropriate actions on the account.
“Additionally, we encourage our users to look for the ‘blue tick’, which indicates that the user’s profile image is genuine and has been verified by Tinder, through our Photo Verification program.”
Hinge has also been approached for comment regarding the claims made in this article.