Indiana native. 62 years old. Big golfer. A huge fan of the LPGA.
On Aug. 4, Rodney opened an Instagram account with the handle @lpgafanatic6512, and he quickly followed some verified accounts for female golfers and a few other accounts that looked official.
Within 20 minutes of creating his account and with zero posts to his name, Rodney received a message from what at first glance appeared to be the world’s No. 2-ranked female golfer, Nelly Korda.
“Hi, handsomeface, i know this is like a dream to you. Thank you for being a fan,” read a direct message from @nellykordaofficialfanspage2.
The real Nelly Korda was certainly not messaging Rodney — and Rodney doesn’t actually exist. The Athletic created the Instagram account of the fictitious middle-aged man to test the veracity and speed of an ever-increasing social media scam pervading the LPGA.
The gist of the con goes like this: Social media user is a fan of a specific golfer; scam account impersonating that athlete reaches out and quickly moves the conversation to another platform like Telegram or WhatsApp to evade social media moderation tools; scammer offers a desirable object or experience — a private dinner, VIP access to a tournament, an investment opportunity — for a fee; untraceable payments are made via cryptocurrency or gift cards. Then, once the spigot of cash is turned off, the scammer disappears.
While this particular con is not limited to golf, player agents, security experts and golfers say it has taken off within the LPGA in the last five years. Charley Hull, Lexi Thompson, Michelle Wie West, Morgan Pressel, Jennifer Kupcho, Hannah Gregg and Korda all have publicly posted warnings about the scams to their followers. Golf influencers Paige Spiranac and Hailey Ostrom also have spoken out.
“It’s been taken out of my hands being able to communicate freely with fans,” Korda, who has a warning statement pinned to the top of her Instagram profile, told The Athletic. “Because I don’t really know their intentions.”
On a handful of occasions, the victims of the scams have continued to blame the golfer for their financial losses even after being confronted with the truth, and some simply refuse to believe they have not been interacting with the real athlete, tipping into fixated behavior that concerns golfers and security officials.
“We’ve definitely had people show up at tournaments who thought they had sent money to have a private dinner with the person,” said Scott Stewart, who works for TorchStone Global, a security firm used by the LPGA. “But then also, we’ve had people show up who were aggrieved because they had been ripped off, there’s a tournament nearby, and they wanted to kind of confront the athlete over the theft.”
Last May, a Pennsylvania man in his 60s drove four hours to Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J., for the Mizuho Americas Open. He was there to meet 22-year-old American golfer Rose Zhang. He told tournament staff that she had left a VIP package for him and even booked him a hotel room. He said they had been communicating on social media for over a year, during which he had sent her around $70,000. Zhang’s agent confronted the man, breaking the news that he was not communicating with Zhang.
Another man traveled from Asia to a tournament in the United States, believing he was married to one of the players. A 68-year-old man from California attended several tournaments to see South Korean golfer In Gee Chun after being duped out of $50,000. England’s Charley Hull warned her followers on Instagram about the scam after “an incident” at a tournament in 2024. And in January, a man showed up at the home of golf influencer Hailey Ostrom after losing $50,000 to an account impersonating her.
Spiranac said the reaction from some of the scam victims has forced her to change the way she works and lives. She now has security at every event, has an active restraining order against one of the scammed individuals, and when fan behavior escalates because of a scam — “flare-ups” as she calls them — she has chosen to skip some events for her safety.
“I’ve had people come up to me at events, at outings, and say that they’re in a relationship with me, or they come up quite angry because ‘fake me’ has scammed them out of money or has ghosted them,” Spiranac said. “Those experiences are quite scary, but it’s also very invasive.”
Added Stewart: “There’s really two victims. You have the person that’s been scammed, but really, the athlete is a victim, too, since they get blamed for it.”
Not too long after joining a Nelly Korda fan page on Facebook in June 2024, a 72-year-old man from South Carolina, whose name is being withheld at the request of his family, received an email from someone claiming to be the real Nelly Korda. Email quickly turned to texting, texting morphed into phone calls, and within days, he told his daughter that they were in love.
