Australian Artist Loses $4,900 To Coachella Scam Led By 'Grammy-Nominated Producer'

An Australian woman recently took to TikTok to share that she had lost almost $4,900 in an elaborate Coachella scam. Rebecca Callander (Beks), a singer and a songwriter, said that she had fallen victim to a scam on Friday when she was on a working holiday in Los Angeles to "network" and meet people within the industry.

This is where she was introduced to a so-called, "Grammy-nominated producer" in LA through a mutual friend. "Me, coming from Bundaberg, a small-town country girl. I was like 'Oh wow this Grammy-nominated producer wants to work with me like, Oh my God'," Beks told Yahoo News Australia. "And as we got talking, the topic of Coachella came up," she added.

Beks said that the so-called producer told her that he had VIP, all-access passes and accommodation for her for the Californian music festival and added that they would be staying at an accommodation with "big artists" and other famous people. He then convinced her to go all in. "Everything was 'you have to do this now', and 'you only have one chance left'," she said.

After sending approximately $3,000 for the VIP ticket, he texted her and said that he had given her the wrong transaction details and wanted her to cancel the transaction so that she could then send him the money in a different way. 

She added that he had then asked her to pay $1,900 for the accommodation in cash the next day. "I went to his studio, I met him and his 'wife'," she said. "And they drove me to an ATM and waited for me to pull cash out."

After this, Beks told the man that she would be repaying him the $3,000 after she got back the money as that was all she had. "At this stage, he accepted that he wasn't going to get the $3,000 off me in cash on top of what I already transferred him."

After this, Beks said that she started getting messages that the accommodation had now called through and the manager had given her spot to somebody else. She then received a message that was too suspicious to ignore, "I don't want no one to know where we are," the message read.

"So I just said [to him] I'm not leaving LA without an address but [he] kept on messaging me, 'Are you coming?' and ignoring what I was saying," she said.

Beks who was extremely confused by this point decided to not attend the festival with the man and thought that she had lost the $1,900 for the accommodation, but would get the original $3,000 ticket money once it bounced back, only to later find out that the bank details were correct.  "It was his girlfriend's bank account who he had introduced as his 'wife'," she said.

Rebecca Callander is not the only one who has fallen victim to this scam. After this incident surfaced, many others came forward and talked about how they too were scammed. Beks says that he has now received thousands of messages with many saying that they too have been targeted by this scammer. 

Three other people independent artists were also scammed by him, she said. "All of us are aware we've likely lost our money but we want to stop this guy," she added.

Moreover, Beks has also shared her story on her Instagram, to spread awareness with the caption, "I wasn’t going to make this video until I saw that this guy is now on his Instagram trying to run the same scam he pulled on me on Coachella weekend 1," she wrote. 

In another follow-up video on TikTok, Beks talked about the four new cases that surfaced, in which one person lost more than $16,000. In the video, she also said that she has now reported the incident to LAPD, and urged them to look into it. 

For music content follow, Rebecca Callander (hi_im_beks) on TikTok.