TAMPA, Fla. — A man who promotes his "one-of-a-kind" animatronic productions on Facebook had his account disabled after someone posted an ISIS flag on his site.
The ABC Action News I-Team learned that repeated attempts to resolve the situation have failed.
“These used to be in pizza parlors, not productions,” Jared Sanchez said.
He was describing four animatronic characters once found at Chuck E. Cheese locations which are now at a studio in his Tampa home.
They are among only seven known “King” characters in existence in the world, and now they dance and perform for the world on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
“It’s fun, you know, when I can take something old and reshape it, and people love it,” Sanchez said.
One is “King Puff.”
“He’s like a Southern boy. He likes to eat just about anything,” Sanchez said.
Next to him is “King John,” who is patterned after Elton John.
"He has that really nice soft UK voice,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez promotes his original productions featuring humans and animatronics interacting on social media.
He gets paid by the number of people who stream his videos.
“Having all the major social media is critical, not only to the money I’m bringing in but also the growth,” he said.
But in late September, Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, shut down his accounts.
“Your account has been disabled,” Sanchez read from the message on his phone.
He learned someone posted an ISIS flag on his page.
“They said it’s been taken down for terrorist activity,” Sanchez said.
But that wasn't all. Someone also purchased ads from Facebook two days after the account was hacked.
The transactions appear to have involved someone from another country.
Sanchez said the credit card linked to his account was expired, so he didn't actually have to pay hundreds of dollars in charges incurred by the hacker.
He disputed Meta disabling his account and emailed the company three times.
“Nobody answered. Come Dec. 7, I got another message from Facebook saying, 'We’ve reviewed your account, and our decision still stands,'" he added.
Sanchez said he was hoping to get back on Facebook and Instagram to promote his upcoming appearance on the History Channel on Jan. 4.
“There’s no communication,” Sanchez said. “I’m giving up. I’m giving up hope.”
After our story ran, a Meta spokesperson sent the following statement:
Our teams were able to ascertain that the account in question appeared to have been hacked, and it has been restored.
We offer security features to help people protect their accounts that are available 24/7 in our Help Center [facebook.com].
If you run into similar issues, Facebook recommends the following:
- We are making investments to further help resolve support-related concerns across our platform. As we said on one of our earnings calls, we’re “...investing more in building out better customer support for our products.”
- Enabletwo-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your Facebook account. If you set up two-factor authentication, you'll be asked to enter a special login code or confirm your login attempt each time someone tries accessing Facebook from a computer or mobile device we don't recognize. To see how it works, watch our video here.
- We also encourage you to sign up to receivealerts for unrecognized logins. These alerts will tell you which device tried logging in and where it's located.
- We also recommend that people ensure their other high-value accounts are secure, such as their email accounts. Sometimes, hackers may use access to people’s emails to compromise their Facebook accounts.
- You should only accept friend and message requests from people you know. Take time to review and confirm each friend and message request that you receive before responding. To help, we launched safety notices in Messenger that pop up in a chat and provide tips to help people spot suspicious activity and block it when something doesn’t seem right. These safety alerts help educate people on how to spot scams or imposters and help them take action to prevent harm.
- If you think your personal account was hacked, please visit facebook.com/hacked to learn how to fix it.
- If both your account and the email account linked to it have been hacked, we may ask for additional information which only you, as the rightful account holder, would know in order to restore your access. This could be an SMS code sent to a mobile number associated with your profile or valid photo ID.
- Once you regain access, we encourage you to change the compromised email associated with your profile in your settings and consider enabling two-factor authentication, trusted contacts and login alerts to keep your account safe.
- While we have dedicated teams and technologies to detect and block malicious activity, we know that no system is perfect. If you do come across something suspicious on Facebook, please report it to us right away, either by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner of a post or through our Help Center so that we can review and take appropriate action.
- We encourage people to not accept suspicious requests and to report suspicious messages that try to trick people into sharing personal information: facebook.com/help/reportlinks.
- We also encourage the Meta community to remain vigilant about clicking on suspicious links or downloading untrusted software to avoid compromising their devices and accounts. More information is available in our Help Center: facebook.com/help/phishing.
If you have a story you’d like the I-Team to investigate, email us at adam@abcactionnews.com.
