How Branden Miller, the man behind Joanne the Scammer, got scammed off Twitter
When Branden Miller created Joanne Prada, a self-described liar and all-around “messy bitch who lives for drama,” he didn’t know just how quickly she would take over the internet.
Five years ago, when Miller uploaded his first video as Joanne to YouTube, the character was a Jerri Blank-esque, over-the-top Chris Brown stan in flawless booger drag. Since then, though, Joanne’s revealed herself to be a woman of many wigs. She’s a recording artist, an independent filmmaker, and, most importantly, a scammer.
As a persona, Joanne’s pretty straightforward. She values her independence, but never misses the opportunity to take advantage of someone else. Why work a job when you can “slip” in a restaurant and settle out of court? Why buy a Prada bag when you can just snatch someone else’s?
Joanne’s is a world where feloniousness is next to godliness and there’s really only one rule worth following: always be the scammer and never the scammed.
But over the weekend, Joanne broke that rule. Somehow, someone managed to scam her out of her own Twitter account. The scam that took Joanne Prada down, Miller told me, started with Katy Perry.
Miller (and Joanne) are big in certain corners of queer, black Tumblr and Instagram, but his (and her) mainstream popularity’s still on the rise. Last Friday, Katy Perry seemingly discovered the character for the first time and tweeted at Joanne, letting her know that the pop star, too, was all about that scamming life.
Not long after Perry’s shoutout, Miller explained, he received an e-mail from someone claiming to work for Twitter who was interested in getting Joanne’s account verified.
“My e-mail address is literally ‘JoanneTheScammer’ at Yahoo, so I get tons of people trying to scam me. They think it’s funny,” Miller told me over the phone. “But the e-mail looked like it was from Twitter and I didn’t think to check.”
According to Miller, the imposter Twitter rep gave him a set of instructions that were necessary to “confirm” his verification. Though he couldn’t recall exactly what he’d done, the process that Miller described to me sounded a lot like he requested that Twitter reset a forgotten password via text message. Users who enable this option receive a unique code via SMS that, in lieu of a password, can be used to log into their accounts.