How my 544,000 follower account got banned for copyright after I refused to pay a scammer his extorsion fee; What really happened to Morbid Kuriosity
Hi, I used to run Morbid Kuriosity since day one, for the past five years, until it was taken down due to false IP claims by a scammer last week as a part of an extortion attempt against me. Morbid Kuriosity, an Instagram account focused on strange history, dark stories, mysteries, and unexplained incidents, was recently suspended after what appears to be a coordinated abuse of Meta’s copyright reporting system. The issue began when Instagram removed one of the account’s Reels for alleged copyright infringement. Instagram removed a reel, and the copyright notice listed the rights owner as “Film Thusiast,” using the email address filmthusiast@privacy.eprivo.com. At first, this looked like a normal copyright complaint, but things quickly became suspicious.
After the removal, the real verified filmthusiast Instagram account was contacted directly. They confirmed that they had not filed any copyright report against Morbid Kuriosity or any other account. They also confirmed that the email connected to the report was not theirs and stated that screenshots of the conversation could be shared with Meta Support. This immediately raised serious concerns that someone had used Filmthusiast’s name without authorization to file a false copyright report.
Soon after, a sender using the name “Stickmrdi” contacted Morbid Kuriosity and demanded $100 USD to “settle” the strike. The sender claimed that once payment was made, the strike would be retracted. In a later email, they provided a BNB Smart Chain cryptocurrency wallet and instructed that payment be sent through crypto. The situation became even more serious when the sender began threatening additional copyright claims and a permanent ban if payment was not made. One of the messages stated: “Whether you believe I own the content or not, the strikes are already on your account and they will hold. Further delays will just lead to more claims and a permanent ban.”
Shortly after that threat, a second copyright report was filed against another Morbid Kuriosity Reel. The second report again listed Filmthusiast as the rights owner, but this time used a different email address: filmthusiaat5@privacy.eprivo.com. That email appeared even more suspicious because it looked like a misspelled variation of the Filmthusiast name, with an extra letter and a number added.
After the second report, Morbid Kuriosity was suspended for intellectual property reasons. The sequence of events is what makes the case disturbing: first, a copyright report was filed using the name of a rights holder who later denied filing it; then a sender demanded cryptocurrency to remove the strike; then the sender threatened more claims and a permanent ban; then another copyright report appeared using another suspicious Filmthusiast-like email; and finally, the entire account was suspended.
Both removed Reels were created, edited, captioned, formatted, and published by Morbid Kuriosity. The account did not copy or repost Filmthusiast’s content. The real verified Filmthusiast account denied filing the reports. The payment demand, crypto wallet request, fake-looking email addresses, and threats of further strikes all point toward a possible impersonation and extortion attempt using Meta’s copyright system as leverage.
The matter has been appealed through Instagram and Meta. The appeal includes the report numbers, removed Reel links, screenshots of the verified Filmthusiast confirmation, the suspicious claimant emails, the payment demand, the cryptocurrency wallet request, and the threat to file additional claims.
At this stage, Morbid Kuriosity is trying to get Meta to review whether the reports were filed by someone falsely claiming to represent Filmthusiast and whether the account suspension resulted from fraudulent or abusive copyright complaints. Does anyone have any advice? Thank you.
