Investors have continued to report scams as criminals have continued to front their malicious platforms using the image of Martin Lewis. According to several reports, the scam ads, mainly from Facebook, saw traders lose more than $700 million last year. This recent report is coming off an earlier one that happened years ago. The same issue of scams with his identity pushed Martin Lewis to slam Meta with a lawsuit. Although all has been settled then, these new malicious activities may spell doom for the social platform.
The criminals use fake ads to divert investors to their platforms
In a statement cited in the report, the criminals use unique methods to lure their victims onto their malicious websites. Although much of it is bothered on advertising on crypto, the modus operandi of the criminals goes deeper than that. After leading investors to their websites with crypto ads with catchy phrases, they lead them to well-written investment articles on their websites. These articles deal with how traders can make massive profits in the market through investments.
Some of these articles claim to be able to teach investors ways to invest £190 into a business and turn it into £3,400 in a matter of days. A typical example is one of the headlines of an article that claims Martin Lewis has devised a new method to increase profits that will scare banks. In a statement by a news outlet, a contact person for the social media company claims the website has ridden the ads from their platform.
Scammers realized more than $700 million in 2021
Although the Facebook contact person claimed that the ads were removed as soon as they saw them, no one has figured out how many people have been affected. Some months ago, an agency in Australia slammed Meta with a lawsuit following the inability to curb fake and scam information on its Facebook platform. Before then, Andrew Forrest, one of the top billionaires in Australia, was the first to use the platform for the same claim that Martin Lewis made.
Scam adverts have been rampant in the last few years, with most of the meta apps housing these scammers. A previous report claims that traders lost more than $700 million to racketeers in 2021. Investors are always convinced by these scammers as long as they add a statement that attributes the support of famous billionaires like Elon Musk. A previous report also noted that scammers were able to defraud traders of about $1 million after editing an old video to show Musk at a Bitcoin conference. These issues have pushed prominent figures to call for the platforms to do better by eliminating these criminal threats.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/investors-report-scams-from-ads-on-facebook/