Stealing photos and faking the influencer life isn’t confined to Singaporean bloggers. Sadelle Yeung is the latest influencer-slash-model to get caught using stolen photos and passing them off as her own, after the Daryl Aiden Yow fiasco has just ended.
Unlike Daryl, though, she doesn’t seem to have intense photo-manipulating skills. She didn’t photoshop herself into stock photos–she simply stole other people’s work!
Who is Sadelle Yeung?
Called a key-opinion leader or KOL by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, Sadelle has a following of roughly 91,000 people on Instagram. She regularly posts about her travel and the beautifully-made meals she allegedly makes on her own.
She’s been featured on a Singaporean travel show called A Seek in Singapore as well. Take a look at some of the photos on her Instagram she says are really her own.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkUpp23hQwb/?taken-by=sadelle
You may notice, though, that she’s disabled all the comments from her posts ever since the news broke that she’s been stealing shots.
She had deleted just this weeks almost 95 photographs from her Instagram account, which netizens presume are the alleged stolen photos from various sources.
So which photos did she steal?
Thanks to the enterprising efforts of netizens, we have the receipts. There is an Instagram account called @copywithsadelle where they’ve posted evidence and documentation of a lot of times she’s been caught and tried to pass the photos (and effort in cooking these recipes featured) as her own!
Take a look:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-unCqFFRY/?tagged=copywithsadelle
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-w1LFFrkH/?tagged=copywithsadelle
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-uN9IlZ9_/?taken-by=copywithsadelle
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-wlmWlyiX/?taken-by=copywithsadelle
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-xZr4lJok/?taken-by=copywithsadelle
Sadelle’s non-apology
When a former fan asked her about all the photos she had stolen, she doubled down on bad behaviour and said, “Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s not fair to conflate one mistake into a big one.”
She probably knows that she’ll get away with her little “mistake,” especially if she lays low and stops people from commenting for a while. But that line there just says that she isn’t sorry she put up stolen photos, she’s only sorry she was caught.
The last time we checked, she’s been collaborated with brands like Givenchy, La Mer, SKII and Yves Saint Laurent for the content she puts out. So if she’s been stealing content, what does that make her?
Are influencers really all that?
With two Asian Instagram stars in hot water over their cavalier attitude towards original work and accountability, is it time for brands to take a closer look at the people they choose to sponsor and collaborate with?
Or is this something that we all eventually have to accept and embrace–that you don’t actually have to make Avocado toast to be known for making great Avocado toast?
By the way, if Sadelle really wanted to make a batch, the recipe for Avocado toast may be found here. She was pretty good at finding those other photos on Google, why couldn’t she find this recipe?
Let us know in the comments!
0.5
She is full of nonsense