Internet scammer poses as Shaggy to target fans, and—go ahead, say it, you know you want to

It’s just beautiful. Not attempting to defraud fans of a particular artist, that’s shitty. Not the distress of knowing that some butthole is taking advantage of the strangers who love your music by using your name, that’s also shitty. But god, if this had to happen to someone, there’s no one better. It’s perfect. It’s almost too much. We are overcome.

According to Shaggy, as brought to our attention by Complex, some internet scammer (that’s the aforementioned butthole) is reaching out to fans claiming to be Shaggy and inferring that those fans owe him money. Here’s the real Shaggy’s statement:

Here’s a shortened version (not particularly SFW):

We can only assume that Shaggy is on the case, trying to find this fiend. When he asks people if they are the scamming butthole, here is how they’re likely to respond:

In a hit song from 2000's Big Shot, Shaggy’s musical alter-ego instructs a friend, Rikrok, on how best to handle the fact that Rikrok’s girlfriend caught him having sex with another woman. Shaggy’s advice to Rikrok is to deny everything, despite the fact that the girlfriend has seen it happening with her own eyes. This is called gaslighting. Yet now we’re asked to trust the veracity of this denial? What say you to that, Shaggy?

Now everyone gets to make that joke. Here is a particularly good example.

Sure, some grow tired of this story. But if you were to ask us, “Hey, The A.V. Club, are you folks tired of the jokes being made about Shaggy dealing with identity theft and an internet scammer?” this would be our response:

In closing, don’t give anyone pretending to be Shaggy money just because they tell you that you must. Here’s a way to be sure: Just ask the potential scammer if they were recently asked to play Sebastian in the live-action Little Mermaid ABC will be airing next month. Their response will likely be:

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