How Joanne The Scammer Got Scammed Off Twitter

Comedian Branden Miller aka @joanneprada became the victim of a hacker who took over his account and held it for ransom. Thankfully, Twitter restored his account.

This is Joanne. She's a liar and a scammer. She loves robbery AND fraud. She's a messy bitch who lives for drama. Please watch her signature video:

In reality, "Joanne" is a character created by Branden Miller.

Joanne Prada, aka "Joanne the Scammer" is the alter ego of Branden Miller, a young comedian from Miami, Florida. As @joanneprada, Miller has created a hilarious and compelling character that has become wildly popular on Twitter. Joanne's iconic line, "I'm a messy bitch who lives for drama," has evolved into its own meme. Celebrities like Katy Perry are fans, and Black Chyna once tweeted a video of her impression of the meme.

The Joanne the Scammer character is absurdly hilarious. The boasting about "scamming" and committing nonsensical crimes like "wine forgery" in a terrible wig are simply wonderful.

In a weird twist of fate, on Sunday night Miller became the victim of an actual scammer who took over his Twitter account. Miller received an official-looking email that appeared to be from Twitter's verification team, claiming the company would verify his account if he confirmed some details. Believing the message to be legit, Miller provided those details, which the scammer used to commandeer his account.

Then, the scammer emailed Miller demanding $500 in ransom to unlock the account. Smartly, Miller never paid.

BuzzFeed News reached out to the real scammer, who did not reply. A rep for Twitter says that these kind of ransom schemes are not common.

Miller wasn’t easily scammed for money. He was adamant that he regain control of his Twitter account before sending any money.

Miller went on to basically own the scammer (who was using the email address twitteruserverified@gmail.com).

Thankfully, our national nightmare is over. This afternoon, Twitter restored the account to its rightful owner.

back in my account. the hacker used an app to delete my tweets so they're slowly like deleting themselves.

Iconic.

Welcome back, Joanne!!!

<3

contouring my face before a big heist is the scam before the scam

Check out BuzzFeed's Internet Explorer podcast interview with Branden Miller, aka Joanne the Scammer:

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