EW ranks the docuseries' most compelling revelations about internet con artists and influencer culture.
Here are 10 major takeaways fromThe Age of Influence.
says journalist Zach Crenshaw inThe Age of Influence.
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“Because we don’t know how many Machelle Hobsons are out there.”
Hobson, however, never made it to trial.She died while in custodyat Honorhealth Shea Medical Center in Arizona.
Hobson’s foster children were all sadly relocated to separate homes.
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Despite the state’s best efforts, they couldn’t rehouse the siblings together.
In her case, pregnancy astonishingly became her cash cow, and she’s not alone.
And I gotta tell ya, I think I did."
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Most appallingly, Hutsona did all of thisaftershe applied for two franchise options.
“I was like, how is she gonna deny this now?”
“She copied everything.
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I’m talking about the menu, the merchandise, the clothing.
However, Vizo was far from Hutsona’s only target…
7.
When the ruse was uncovered, Hutsona tearfully promised to pay back Joumana for everything she stole.
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At first, this was true.
But the rest of the cash wasalsoKidd’s own, and that of her underage children’s college funds.
By the end of her string of scams, Hutsona had relieved Kidd of over $1 million.
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I mean, what kind of person does that?”
Hutsona pleaded guilty to wire fraud last summer.
In February, she was sentenced to four years in prison.
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Yet, there is still another victim who suffered from Hutsona’s manupulation…
6.
“I missed it!
“[My husband] Vince and I had a really rocky relationship [at the time].
When Tracii came here she recognized that right away.
And she would agree I was being disrespected,” Flaherty admits.
And she wouldn’t tell me exactly why she felt that way.”
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The truth was even darker than Flaherty would have dared to imagine.
“I’m very angry and very hurt, to this day,” she admits.
“I still cry about it.
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It’s that painful.”
Sorokin’s act of kindness led to a bond between the two scammers during their shared time behind bars.
Miller spent this money on a luxury apartment in Miami, rented Rolls-Royces, and bought expensive handbags.
They lured her downstairs with a call from the front desk saying they had a package for her.
Usually, these involved the no-questions-asked gifting of cash to bewildered fast food and retail workers.
Mazini’s page became so popular that rapper50 Centeven joined him for one giveaway video.
(Halal means something permissible under Islamic teaching.)
In reality, Mazini used this money mostly for the purposes of his own gambling.
But things soon took a dark turn.
“Bigorexia is a body dysmorphic condition.
It’s reverse anorexia,” explains fitness instructor Ryan Schmidle.
“It’s essentially men that suffer with obsessive compulsive thoughts [that] they’re too small.
Because social media doesn’t discriminate, it pushes content like that to both sides of the equation.
“The commercial sharenting sector is largely unregulated.
But there are bad actors out there that may be criminal and dangerous,” Plunkett cautions.
