With his swift rise in the music industry, Atlanta, Georgia rapper Rich Homie Quan, like a number of artists, recently found himself the victim of booking impersonators. The musician’s experience with these impersonators was recently detailed to XXL magazine by his longtime manager, Demonta “Monta” Gibson and a concert promoter who fell victim to the scam.
According to Gibson, who says fake bookings for Quan happened at least seven times in the past couple of months, he became aware of those impersonating the rapper and his management in order to scam promoters, about a year ago.
“About a year ago, people started contacting me on my DM in my Instagram and would ask me if Quan was booked in certain different places,” Gibson said. “We thought we got to the bottom of that issue then. Then things started picking up at a different pace; we would get phone calls and people would pick the phone up and just start cursing, ‘Quan missed my show last night’…It’s becoming a thing. It has become a hustle for other people… And it’s becoming a big issue, not just for Rich Homie but for a lot of different artists.”
Chris Dual, a veteran booking agent, spoke on his experience with a person pretending to represent Quan. Dual, who came across the Rich Homie Quan impersonator via a fake Instagram account, lost several thousand dollars after dishing out a $12,500 deposit to the impersonator.
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“The crazy thing was that everything matched up,” Dual said. “It’s becoming so… It’s happening way too much, whether it’s people on the inside doing it, or somebody else. It’s kind of like marriage; it’s gonna cost you a couple thousand to get the ring on her hand, and then it’ll cost you $30,000 or $40,000 to get out of it.”
In addition to Rich Homie Quan, artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj have also fallen victim to fake bookings and impersonators. And in 2013, an alleged R. Kelly impersonator upped the ante by performing as the singer at a show in Monroe, Louisiana.
