This entrepreneur's product went viral on TikTok. Scammers quickly swooped in.
Michelle Mildred is the proud entrepreneur behind the company Coloring Your Own. She's not the owner of a company called "Flolyed Shop," which is just one of the many sites posting fake ads using her face and voice.
The single mother says the ads are promoting products that look like hers, and sending customers to scam sites overseas.
"I oscillate between like, 'I can hang on until this ends,' and then, 'I don't know how much more I can take,'" Mildred said.
She says some customers are getting counterfeit products when ordered from scam sites, and some aren't. If they are, they're much lower quality.
"You can see the print is really glitchy," she said while showing WCCO a knockoff one of her customers unknowingly purchased.
It all started after she posted a product to TikTok in September that went viral.
"Within 36 hours there were fraudulent videos on Amazon, and then Walmart, Temu," she said.
Mildred individually reported the sponsored ads on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
"I did hire an intellectual property firm. They've taken down 175 listings, but I've reported over 750 and it takes them a while to get up and running," she said.
It's an effort costing her nearly $2,000 a month out-of-pocket, and endless back-and-forth conversations.
"I have to bring this to Facebook and be like, 'Hey, turn off this revenue stream for you because it's causing damage to my small business,'" she said.
Mildred is now taking steps to watermark her videos, website and urging you to watch out, too.
"I didn't pay myself for four years," she said. "I don't know what the future looks like."
Mildred says these are ways you can best protect yourself:
- If you see something advertised on social media, click on the page itself to see who's running the ad and their reviews.
- Go to the website and see what other items are offered, and if they look AI-generated.
- Search the website in Google and write "scam or fraud" and look at the products on Trust Pilot.
WCCO has reached out to Meta and TikTok for comment.