Hallmark Channel released a PSA this week, pulling in a lineup of its biggest stars to warn fans directly about fake accounts impersonating them online. Jonathan Bennett, Tyler Hynes, Andrew Walker, Nikki DeLoach, Benjamin Ayres, Victor Webster, and Lacey Chabert all appear in the roughly 45-second video. We cover Hallmark Channel news year-round here at FLN, and this is one of the more important pieces of Hallmark news we have come across in a while.
The message builds line by line as the cuts move between actors. Fake accounts are impersonating Hallmark stars and reaching out to fans directly with misleading messages, sometimes asking for money, gifts, or personal information. Victor Webster makes clear this isn’t just people typing under a fake name anymore either, noting that AI is now part of the problem, and Tyler Hynes follows by telling fans not to trust a message “even if it looks or sounds like me.” Lacey Chabert closes the video with a direct apology on behalf of the cast, saying plainly that it is a scam, before thanking fans for being part of what Hallmark calls its family and encouraging people to report and share the video.
This is the kind of thing that used to be everywhere and now barely happens at all. It genuinely reminded us of NBC’s old “The More You Know” spots, the ones that would just stop the show for thirty seconds so a familiar face could tell you something useful before getting back to the plot. We wish more companies still did this, especially now. Social media makes it so easy to build a convincing fake profile, and a lot of fans, especially younger ones or people newer to a fandom, genuinely do not know that the account messaging them with a familiar face attached might not be who it says it is. Credit to Hallmark and every actor who agreed to appear in this. It costs them time and screen time for zero commercial payoff, and they did it anyway.
One thing worth pointing out is who Hallmark put in front of the camera for this. This wasn’t a background player or a name casual viewers might not recognize. Lacey Chabert and Tyler Hynes are about as big as it gets on this network right now, especially with Chabert headlining Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True, Hallmark’s first-ever movie collaboration with Disney Parks, this holiday season. Putting your most recognizable faces on a scam warning instead of saving them for a movie premiere says something about how seriously the company is taking this. And speaking of Tyler Hynes, we get somewhere around ten friend requests a week from him on Facebook. Every single one, obviously fake. But we will admit the logic gets a little tempting. Surely the real Tyler Hynes does not have time to personally befriend every Hallmark blogger in Central Florida, which means if an account is going out of its way to add us specifically, it has to be the real one, right? No. It does not. We know that. Still, if you are reading this, Tyler, we would take a real friend request.
Watch the full PSA and share it with anyone who follows a Hallmark star online. It is the kind of five minutes well spent that could save someone a real headache later.
