A pro professional fake celebrity ads scam launched from Georgia has ripped off thousands of savers in the UK, Europe and Canada over the past 3 years, embezzling $35 million in the process. The fake news was accompanied by deepfake videos of Martin Lewis, Zoe Ball and Ben Fogle promoting bogus cryptocurrency and investment schemes to dupe people into parting with their money.
This article is based on a large sample of over 1 million recordings seized from the scam call centers and how 85 call agents persuaded the victims to part with their life savings. UK citizens were the hardest hit, losing £9 million, and the most-affected victim lost £162,000 after being persuaded for 135 hours. Some victims, including a former NHS doctor, lost everything, and it has proved to be fatal.
The UK government has approved the Online Safety Act; however, the parts that concern fraudulent ads are still not in effect. In the meantime, the platforms like Facebook and Google still display the scam content even though they have been raising concerns over the matter for a long time.
The scammers, however, made it easier for themselves in that they forced the victims to open accounts with Revolut, Kroo and Chase through which they could easily transfer the money and move it to other countries.
Revolut has reported that 60% of scam cases were reported to have happened through Meta platforms that include Facebook and WhatsApp. This is probably the biggest scandal ever to have been linked to social media platforms, and it has greatly raised the issue of just how far such platforms should be allowed to facilitate fraud.
Meta has always claimed that it has policies in place that prohibit the use of fraudulent ads, but this kind of scam remains rampant, which shows that the enforcement is not very effective. Google also says that it removes ads that violate its policies but fails to stop the deceptive content.
This scandal has highlighted the need for more stringent measures to be put in place to regulate the social media platforms to protect the consumers. The MPs and the financial watchdogs are now demanding more regulation of the online advertising in order to avoid such large scale scams in the future.
