PSA: LiveGlam history of & security breaches

It's no secret that I DO NOT like Dhar Mann or his company LiveGlam. I honestly have nothing personally against him as I do not know him and have not been directly affected by his actions. The reason I do not like him or his company is simply, in my opinion,  he deliberately and intentionally scammed people out of their money on the LiveGlam "school" with their "diplomas"/"certificates". He hurt the industry and many companies have simply done away with pro discounts for real professional makeup artists because of scams like this and others.

The other issue I have with LiveGlam is the fact the certificate/diploma were aimed at teens and followers of the social influencers involved as well as those who truly want to become a real working makeup artist only to discover they spent $100 to $300+ on a worthless "diploma"/"certificate". THAT is why I don't like LiveGlam.

Before I get into the security breaches near the end of this post let me give you some back history on LiveGlam and it's founder/owner Dhar Mann.

2012

• Found himself in trouble with the city of Oakland for, as The Mercury News later reported, "pocketing city grant money".
  
• May 2012: He was brought up on charges by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, as reported by the Huffington Post.

2014

• Engaged in 2014 with Shahs of Sunset's star Lilly Ghalichi.
  
• February 2014 he plead no contest on five counts of felony fraud and sentenced to five years of probation.

2015

• Early 2015 Dhar purchased the LiveGlam domain from Huge Domains.
  
• March 2015 - began to work on it by March 2015.
  
• April 29 the LiveGlam website was up and running with Dress Your Face, Makeup By Shayla, Makeup By Lilit, and Angel Merino. Cost: $19 per month.
  
• September 2015 they had a few more people involved to "teach" at what he now was calling the "LiveGlam Pro Academy". Still only $19 per month.
  
• December 2015 - I first heard about LiveGlam and reported about the company in mid-December. I thought it was a scam then, still think it's a scam now. By this time Dhar had dropped the tutorial aspect at $19 per month and switched his "LiveGlam Pro Academy" video tutorials with a Q&A session to a more lucrative certificate/diploma "online school" formula at $295 per year.

2016

• April 2016 - By this time Patrick Starr, Mathias Alan, Dress Your Face, and several other social media influencers with over 10,000+ followers were involved in scamming people out of $295 PER YEAR on this online "diploma" (listed as a diploma in the FAQs). The focus now was heavily on the "diploma"/"certificate" to give the person the ability to apply for pro discounts with companies that require a certificate. As a result, between 2016 and now MANY companies no longer accept certificates as proof of being a true professional makeup artist.
• June 9, 2016 was the last entry on WayBack Machine for 2016 on LiveGlam and by this time Morphe had become HEAVILY involved with LiveGlam with the MorpheMe hashtag. Subscribers to the LiveGlam "pro certificate" program were sent Morphe products. 
• December 2016 I had already been saying for a year that LiveGlam was a scam since certificates are meaningless in the eyes of the law. By this time he wrote an article on his website about their "one year anniversary" and how some people (me and others) were calling LiveGlam "LiveScam". He stated in this article that the certificate program was now discontinued BUT you can see that it actually wasn't completely gone but merely hidden. The certificate part didn't fully go away until sometime in 2017. (Note: The WayBack Machine link for March 2017 shows the pro link but if you click on it the only archived page goes back to 2016 so there's no way to fully determine when the Pro program actually was pulled from LiveGlam.)

2017

• April 25, 2017 - The California Attorney General's Office reports (in December 2017) that on April 25, 2017, the LiveGlam website is compromised and information was stolen. This goes unknown for months.
• By March 2017, the LiveGlam Academy/Pro certificate program was gone. I can't help but wonder how many people paid $300 then later $100 for their "certificate".
• March 2017 - the focus for LiveGlam was the Morphe subscription services. He along with the Tawil siblings, owners of Morphe, were heavily focused on MorpheMe (brushes), Kiss Me (lip glosses), and Polish Me (nail polish).
• Beginning of December - People were leaving one star reviews on LiveGlam's Facebook page (review section has since been hidden) complaining about credit/debit card fraud.
• December 5, 2017 - Beauty Sleuth reported on Instagram that people had contacted her with screenshots of emails between them (the customer) and LiveGlam (dated in October-December 2017) where credit card breaches were denied.
• December 3, 2017 - LiveGlam acknowledge security breach to at least one person in the reviews portion. Reviews section hidden since.
• December 10, 2017 - LiveGlam did blog and acknowledge there was a credit card breach. The link to the blog post was dated December 10 but supposedly was originally written December 3. No other posts made about the data/security breaches between December 1 and 28 on any of their social media accounts until December 29.
• December 29, 2017 - The California Attorney General Office has a sample letter on their website. One small/brief on LiveGlam's Twitter page on the matter, no other social media posts made since that one Tweet.

So what does this mean to you? If you're a LiveGlam subscriber and have debit/credit card issues since joining I would suggest contacting the California Attorney General as they're aware of the situation. I do not know if the security breaches were intentional or not by anyone at LiveGlam BUT if you've been affected let the ATG office know.

Also keep in mind a class action lawsuit MAY be filed against LiveGlam as it was against LimeCrime, however, that doesn't mean those involved will get anything to cover the expenses incurred by the fraud. Those who were involved with the LimeCrime matter received very little. A friend of mine got $44 from it despite hundreds having hit her credit card. If you want to sue on your own you can and I would suggest speaking to an attorney as soon as possible.

This post was originally published in 2018.