[ghego1]

Not legal advice.

Why fraud? If we are talking about criminal law, the requirements to convict a person are strict. In this case the author has not claimed neither on Patreon or YouTube to be someone he is not. He has not falsified any data/documents and has not stolen any account, since the one he claimed was available.

Sketchy? No doubts. Fraud? Doesn't seem like it at all.

[kuu]

> In this case the author has not claimed neither on Patreon or YouTube to be someone he is not

I am not a lawyer, but using someone else picture and name sounds a bit of "claiming someone you're not" to me :)

[Closi]

In the UK it could be technically counted as fraud by false representation. The legal hurdles for this are:

* The patreon page was misleading (this post shows it was, including the use of old links and imagery to show association to a YouTube channel which was false)

* The person making it knows it might be misleading (they did - they said so in this post)

* The intention was to make a gain in money for themselves, others or to cause a loss to someone else. This includes situations where the gain in money is only temporary (again, technically yes.)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/pdfs/ukpga_2006...

I'm not saying they should be charged with it as clearly they didn't mean to cause harm and were doing it to raise awareness, but it does seem to fit the definition.

[londons_explore]

Simply putting your name on patreon to be someone else's youtube username, and doing so deliberately for financial gain, could be considered fraud...