Fake celebrity investment ads
Scammers use AI to manipulate videos of celebrities and business leaders so that they appear to promote investment schemes, which often involve cryptocurrency. The videos are shown as social-media adverts or fake livestreams. Scammers then try to move victims to private messaging apps and show them fake websites where their investment appears to grow (New York Attorney General).
What official agencies advise
- Know the red flags: requests to invest from celebrities or other famous people, promises of guaranteed returns, demands to invest immediately, and requests to move the conversation to encrypted private messaging platforms (New York Attorney General).
- No investment is risk-free. If anyone says you can earn a lot of money with little or no risk, don't buy into the hype: investments always involve risk, and there are no guaranteed returns (FTC).
- Check the endorsement yourself: search online using the celebrity's name, the name of the company or product, and words like "scam" or "fake" (FTC).
- Be wary of livestreams and other video or audio messages that try to persuade you to invest. Even if it appears to be a livestream, it could still be a deepfake (New York Attorney General).
- Do your own checks: search for reviews of the salesperson, verify any physical address they give, and check the investment professional's registration, for example on FINRA's BrokerCheck (New York Attorney General).
- Report deepfake investment content to law enforcement and to the social media platform where it appears (New York Attorney General).
- In the United States, you can also report a bogus celebrity endorsement to the FTC (FTC).
- Beware of offers to recover lost money: victims may later be contacted by services that suggest they can retrieve their funds, and end up losing more (New York Attorney General).
Sources
- New York State Attorney General, "INVESTOR ALERT: ... Investment Scams Using AI-Manipulated Videos" (29 August 2024).
- US Federal Trade Commission, "Did a celebrity really endorse THAT? Maybe not" (April 2024).