Crypto Ads of Musk & Bezos in 'Celeb Scam Super League'
Those most trusted - the celebrities we know and love - have been used and abused in fraudulent cryptocurrency advertisements, and the losses are beyond belief. Despite Internet platforms' best attempts to combat such illegal activity, con artists have flipped the script and are taking advantage of images of distinguishable public figures to deceive and loot the unsuspecting. An overview from NatWest Bank has unveiled just how much money British citizens have been hoodwinked out of. It's an abysmal outcome of sham endorsement from interminable popular personas.
It is plain to see that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have been the victims of fraud. These notorious billionaires were tricked into believing that a cryptocurrency trading platform was genuine, resulting in many investors losing a hefty amount of money. In Jeff's case, almost two hundred thousand pounds were lost in this scandalous scam. Similarly, with Elon, people were duped into thinking that his 'endorsement' of the scheme was legitimate and consequently conned out of more than forty thousand pounds. NatWest customers' top three celebrity-related scams of this year, however, did not involve any digital assets. Most likely this is due to the bear market taking a toll on the following of crypto.
The scandalous case involving Peter Jones, the host of the British version of 'Shark Tank' and multi-millionaire, needed to be tackled. Photos taken at the promotion of the venture showed that it had been disguised as a genuine PR project; resulting in £285,209 ($352,649) being wiped from the pocket of one individual. This was not a solitary occurrence; with renowned naturalist David Attenborough's name being dragged through an unscrupulous Tweet that made claims he had taken home a huge £125,000 ($154,525) from investments in oil, natural gas, and gold stock markets. While Conservationist values have always been associated with his work, the victim of the ploy lost a disheartening sum of £275,551 ($340,636).
Broadcaster Piers Morgan has caused plenty of stir and strife amongst people, and now he has been at the center of a much worse kind of controversy. It has been discovered that some Facebook users have been tricked into forking over a hefty sum of £232,238 ($287,105), with one of them paid an astounding £149,651 (£184,989). Even the face of British financial journalist and consumer rights advocate Martin Lewis couldn't save these people from being rooked. NatWest claims that these feats of swindling weren't actually the largest ones, and were just a single bank's records: this means there's a huge likelihood that more people got taken advantage of due to similar scams.
This week has seen two celebrities fall from grace in NatWest's ratings, with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield facing accusations of cutting a line while paying their respects to the Queen. Stuart Skinner, a NatWest scam expert, recently highlighted the concerning reality of criminals using high-profile names to dupe people out of millions of pounds. He emphasizes the need for social media channels to join forces in blocking out bogus investment ads utilizing celebrities. Recently, Schofield has fallen short of being a paragon of morality, with his secretive extra-marital affair with a coworker coming to light while he was still married. Hence, this is yet another demonstration of the pressing need to address the ever-growing and ever-dire issue of criminal abuse of celebrities for financial gain.
