Utah woman loses hair, dignity, confidence in phone scam convincing her to shave head
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Megan Randolph is mad. And devastated. And in her own words, her confidence has been “rocked.”
Randolph, a model from Layton, Utah, is the victim of a scam. But the scam artist wasn’t after her money so much as her dignity — and her hair.
“Oh yeah, I haven’t left the house, I don’t plan on leaving the house until I can figure something out and I know that sounds silly,” the now completely bald Randolph said.
It started with a text message from a stranger, and Randolph told KUTV she just doesn’t give her phone number out to strangers, but this one already knew her name and “Ashley” said she had been referred to her. Before the conversation was over, Randolph had been convinced to shave her head down to the skin, and her eyebrows, in exchange for a couple of thousand bucks.
“I was a little hesitant at first,” she said.
It helped the scammer’s cause that Randolph hasn’t been able to work consistently since she was in a car crash in late 2020. Even a few hundred or a couple of thousand dollars. The money never came and the person misrepresenting herself as agent of Redken beauty and hair care products vanished along with the phone number that is now out of service. All Randolph has to show for her troubles are photos and videos of the self hair-cut process.
Megan Randolph before she was scammed into shaving her head and eyebrows. (Photo: Courtesy Jacob Zeke)
Megan Randolph was tricked into shaving her head, believing it was for money from a beauty company. (Photo: Courtesy Megan Randolph)
She knows some members of the public may be cruel to her about falling victim to a scam and for shaving her head but she wants to get word out and doesn’t want others to fall prey to the same trick.
“I am a little devastated…but it is just hair and it will grow back. I wasn’t scammed out of anything but it’s malicious; it’s 100% cruel,” she said.
Randolph and her husband tried to verify the number and it showed it was indeed registered to Redken, probably a phone trick used to mimic numbers for caller ID. He also called it to hear a voice mail service that, despite how skeptical he was, was convincing.
Part of trick was that Redken does have a series of online media campaigns about how to handle hair at home so a home haircut didn’t seem far fetched. What Randolph found online seemed to confirm the information provided her by the scammer. Ashley also promised more money paid for more hair taken and since Randolph says she can’t draw a straight line, something complicated like a bowl cut wasn’t even an option.
Then, instead of a short buzz, because of a “misunderstanding” that didn’t allow Ashly to use the buzz cut videos Randolph made for promotions, she was urged to take her hair all the way to skin for thousands instead of hundreds of dollars. She can’t imagine anybody being that heartless to another person.
“They don’t understand the hit that somebody takes. They used me, they abused me..and they just throw it away. I am going to be really blunt, it’s something like a digital rape.”
In the meantime, she is wearing a beanie on her completely bald head, even at home.
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