Sydney rapper, That Kid Kearve, has estimated that he has lost over $50,000 after his Instagram got hacked in September last year.
In 2018 That Kid Kearve hit number one on the rap and hip hop charts for iTunes, his music has had over 60 million time and his verified Instagram account has over 78,000 followers. However, the last post on the account was in September 2021, days before he was locked out by a hacker.
That Kid Kearve, real name Trent Pedrana, says that he received an innocent looking text with a link to a website. When Pedrana clicked on this link, his account was compromised.
Hours later, Pedrana’s sister was contacted on Whatsapp and asked for $1500 ransom in order to get the rapper’s IG account back. After trying to log into his account, Pedrana found that his password wouldn’t work and the security phone number had been changed to one in Turkey.
“Give me the password,” his sister told the hacker. “You’re not going to get money anyway so just give me the password now”.
Pedrana didn’t pay the ransom, and assumed that he would be able to get back into his account by contacting Instagram. The rapper’s followers reported his account multiple times, and it was deactivated. Pedrana then tried to get back into the account but recieved an error email, and hasn’t been able to gain access since. All of his requests to Instagram have gone unanswered.
“Sorry, we can’t send you a link to reset your password. Please contact Instagram for help,” the email read.
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That Kid Kearve isn’t signed to a label and relies on social media to promote his songs, albums and shows. He has estimated that the hack has lost him over $50,000.
“I haven’t done shows in two years, I’ve been living off my streams and my merch. I can’t even set up a tour or anything [because of the Instagram hack], that’s $50,000 to $100,000 gone,” he explained.
“I’m still making money [but] can’t do anything else to progress,” he told News.com.au.
Pedrana’s wife told the publication, “Terrible timing, right when I stopped working, we were expecting more money to be coming than what it was.”
Pedrana added: “Just before this has happened, I’ve invested close to $100,000 in a house, it was a bad time for it to happen.”
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