Summary
Charles Ray, a real, harmless TikTok creator known for wearing silly hats and telling bad jokes had his videos stolen and repurposed across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat to run fake animal rescue donation scams and fake "handmade" sadvertising campaigns. This post breaks down how the scam works, shows the accounts involved, and teaches readers how to spot reused video content before they donate or buy.
OK, I need to tell you about the sweetest man I’ve never met, and the absolute mess of a scam network that’s been wearing his face.
His name is Charles Ray. He’s 85 years old, and he’s got a TikTok channel where he puts on a different silly hat for every video and tells corny little jokes with total sincerity. He’s got over 55,000 followers who genuinely adore him. And somewhere along the way, a network of scammers decided his warmth and his wrinkles were exactly what they needed to squeeze money out of strangers.
I found his stolen footage running fake “save our shelter” campaigns in 22 examples so far, across multiple platforms, selling everything from a dog rescue to a cat shelter to, I kid you not, a turtle sanctuary. Let’s dig in.
(Prefer to watch? Video’s right below. Prefer to read? Keep scrolling.)
How I found this
I run into a lot of “sadvertising” in my investigations. That’s the scam where an ad or a post is built entirely around tugging your heartstrings so hard you don’t stop to think. An old man, a shelter that’s about to close, a plea to just “watch 9 seconds” or “leave a comment.” It’s a formula, and once you’ve seen it enough times, it starts jumping out at you.
This time, the face kept repeating. Same man. Same hats. Same shelves in the background. Different shelter every time.
So I went looking, and I found him. Charles Ray, real person, real TikTok, real dad jokes, absolutely nothing to do with any shelter, sheep farm, or “handmade” storefront anywhere.
The real Charles Ray
Charles posts on TikTok as @charles.ray576. He’s got no bio, just a wall of videos, each one built around a different silly hat and a sincere little joke he clearly enjoys telling. His engagement is real. His followers are real. And he’s already noticed the theft himself. In one of his own videos, he addressed it directly, saying something to the effect of, “I’m not asking for money, other than maybe a comment.”
The scammers didn’t back off when he called them out. They doubled down. That exact line, him saying he’s not asking for money, is now getting clipped into the scam videos themselves. They’re using his own honesty as a prop.
The network I found
Every single one of these accounts uses Charles Ray’s stolen footage, and every single one is asking you for something, whether it’s a donation, a “stay 9 seconds so I don’t lose my shelter,” or a sale on “handmade” goods that were never handmade by anyone in these videos.
Glow Pup – Facebook page, 129K followers, using his photo as their profile picture and clipping his videos into “save our dog shelter” reels asking people to like, comment, and share so they “don’t have to shut down.”
We Help Cats – YouTube channel soliciting donations using his footage.
Webwalletsco – Instagram account running sadvertising for “handmade” items, using his clips to build trust before the sales pitch.
breathing.teddy.kingdom – Instagram, same playbook, sadvertising for “handmade” goods.
@HenryGrandpa / SnugPaws – YouTube, sadvertising built around cat shelter donations.
Penny&Poppy – TikTok, running the “help me save my sheep farm” version, over 1,400 likes on a single clip.
AquaCruisers – Facebook, sadvertising for “handmade” items.
CatShelterUS.com – Snapchat, a fake cat shelter storefront with 46,000 followers, selling “toys” while running the exact same “please stay 9 seconds” script.
Franklin & Gemma – TikTok, running a fake turtle shelter version of the same con.
SoftPawsHero – Instagram, another fake cat rescue 😿
Memory Orb / cuddle.farm – TikTok based “help me save my farm” scam
alex_rescue – As mentioned in the video, this YouTube channel has over 63,000 followers, and their Shopify store shows they have received $3,888 from 92 donors – for a non-existent rescue! (see screenshot below)
Marks Meow Mugs – TikTok channel with 8,400+ followers, selling mugs that were supposedly handmade by Charles
Bernard D. / slipurr – YouTube channel using Charles’ image as a profile pic and all of his videos, selling “handmade” cat slippers to save a fake cat shelter
DazieandClyde – TikTok, fake “help save our farm” selling “handmade” sheep slippers, also using an AI generated older woman that appears to be based on popular TikToker, buzziebeeteacher
DollieandClyde / dollieandclyde2 – TikTok, not to be confused with DazieandClyde (but likely run by the same scammer), same fake “help save our farm” selling “handmade” sheep slippers, and also using an AI generated older woman that appears to be based on popular TikToker, buzziebeeteacher
Cotton and Bessie – TikTok, another fake “help save our farm” selling “handmade” sheep slippers, also using footage of another TikToker from the pete and madi / petefromthestreet_
wendyanddolly / wendyanddolly4 – TikTok, yet another “help save our farm” selling “handmade” sheep slippers, also using an AI generated older woman that appears to be based on popular TikToker, buzziebeeteacher
Moose and Molly – TikTok, same scam, different animal – this time it’s a fake cow shelter and “handmade” cow slippers
Mabel & Finch / mabelfinch – TikTok, over 5,000 followers, fake “turtle shelter and, if you guessed “homemade” turtle slippers – you’re right!
AshenElderCo.com / asheneldersco – TikTok, over 4K followers, this time selling… “handmade” MAGIC WANDS
Billyrescue – YouTube channel with over 71,000 followers, another fake “save our cat shelter” scam that leads to the very same Shopify store as alex-rescue (see above) that shows they have received $3,888 from 92 donors – for a non-existent rescue!
PurrChase.Co – TikTok, another fake cat shelter, selling “handmade” cat toys
ben.rescue – TikTok, fake cat shelter, selling “handmade” cat toys
Life point save them all – TikTok, fake cat shelter, taking payments in Euros, selling “handmade” cat lamps
nemipets – TikTok, yes, another fake cat shelter, selling “handmade” cat collars with a build in laser pointer
whiskers.safehaven – TikTok, over 5,550 followers, fake “save our cat shelter” scam, selling “handmade” cat slippers
Georgelamps – TikTok, fake cat shelter scam, selling “handmade” cat lamps
That’s the full network as documented so far, but there are others.
It’s not just stolen footage anymore
Some of what’s circulating is simply Charles, his real videos, lifted and re-edited into a new “cause.” But not all of it. Some of these accounts have taken his face and his voice and used AI tools to generate entirely new reels of him, saying things he never said, for shelters and causes he’s never heard of.
He’s been robbed twice. Once by simple theft, and once by outright fabrication.
Sit with this for a second. Charles Ray has exactly one channel. TikTok. That’s it. But because of scammers, an 85 year old man with a single social media account now “appears” on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, a presence he never built, never wanted, and in some of these videos, never even actually filmed.
This isn’t just me noticing
I’m not the only one who’s caught on. There’s an entire thread on Reddit, over on r/HelpMeFind, where people have been trying to track down who this man actually is after spotting him in so many different videos.
This has made international news too. Swiss outlet Blick, a major German-language daily paper, ran a piece on this exact pattern, warning readers about heartbreaking videos being used to push fake “handmade” goods. Charles himself has even sat down for interviews with local news stations about it.
When strangers on Reddit and newspapers on the other side of the world are noticing the same man’s face turning up in scam after scam, that tells you this isn’t some fringe, one-off thing. It’s a real, active pattern, and it’s worth taking seriously.
What this tells us
This isn’t one scammer being lazy. This is a script, a formula, being handed around and reused by a whole network of accounts. “Please stay 9 seconds and listen to my bad jokes so I don’t have to shut down my [blank] shelter” is close to word for word across multiple platforms and multiple “causes.” Swap the animal, swap the account name, keep the stolen grandpa.
It works because it’s not asking for much. A comment. Nine seconds of your time. A “like” so the algorithm boosts the post. That feels harmless, which is exactly why people do it without thinking twice, and every one of those harmless little actions is training the platform’s algorithm to show the scam to more people. You’re not just being asked for nothing. You’re being asked to do the scammer’s marketing for them, for free.
How to protect yourself
Reverse-search the video, not just the picture. If a post is begging you to watch, comment, or share to “save” something, do a quick search using a few frames or the account name before you do any of those three things.
Watch for the same face, different cause. If you’ve seen this exact person or exact script attached to a different animal, different charity, or different “handmade” store, that’s your answer right there.
“Handmade” and “shelter” posts that lean hard on urgency are a red flag, not a reason to rush. A real shelter or a real small business generally isn’t building its entire pitch around a stranger’s face and a plea to just comment within the next nine seconds.
Check whether the account can prove where the money goes. No registered charity information, no transparency about where a “handmade” item actually comes from, no way to verify the “shelter” exists. That’s not a small business or a struggling rescue. That’s a storefront built on stolen goodwill.
Look up the account’s history. A donation-only account that’s a few months old with tens of thousands of followers and posts that are all the same recycled script deserves a second look before your first dollar.
Don’t count on being able to spot a fake by how it looks anymore. AI generated video is getting good, fast, and some of this footage isn’t stolen so much as fabricated from someone’s real face and voice. Lean on the ask itself instead. A real shelter or real charity doesn’t build its whole pitch around a stranger’s face and a plea to comment within nine seconds, no matter how real the footage looks.
Quick scam checklist
- Same person’s face or footage showing up attached to multiple, unrelated “causes”
- Posts that beg for likes, comments, or shares as a condition of “saving” something
- No verifiable registered charity or business information
- “Handmade” claims with no evidence of an actual maker
- Urgency language (“please, just 9 seconds”) standing in for real information
- Comments turned off, or comments that are suspiciously uniform in tone
- Footage that feels slightly off in timing, mouth movement, or audio, a possible sign of AI generation rather than a real clip
The bottom line
Charles Ray never asked anyone for a dime. He’s out there in his silly hats telling his silly jokes because he likes doing it, and his real followers love him for exactly that. Somebody took that warmth, that trust he built one hat at a time, and turned it into bait.
If you’ve ever sent money or shared one of these posts, you weren’t foolish. You were kind, and someone engineered a con specifically designed to catch kind people off guard. The scammers built this. You didn’t fall for anything except good, old fashioned manipulation dressed up in a cowboy hat.
About this investigation
This investigation is based on original research and documentation collected by Chris Durst, founder of AskGrammy.com, including screenshots and account records gathered while tracking a recurring pattern of stolen video content across multiple platforms. This post will be updated as new accounts using this same stolen footage are identified.