Online criminals abuse Facebook, Instagram, X and other platforms for dishonest activities. Some operators seem reluctant to act.
It is widely known that you cannot assume everything announced on social networks to be true. But some fraudsters are not content just disseminating common news. They publish credible, yet faked news reports to snare their victims.
They usually use celebrities announcing huge profits they made on some online investment platform or other to get people hooked. Such reports are published on common portals such as X, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.
Once you click on the news article, you end up on a popular, yet also fake online news portal such as “Blick” or “20 Minuten”. There, reportage-style, you will find advertising for a purported revolutionary, secure and immensely lucrative investment opportunity. Frequently, celebrities are also used here as bait – of course, without their actual knowledge. If you fall for this fabricated report and invest your money, you generally lose it all.
Some Social Media displaying such adverts are very slow to react when such scamming attempts are reported. As per “Heise”, it is Meta (which operates Facebook) in particular which attracts negative attention. Unlike Google for instance, Meta / Facebook often takes several days or even weeks to remove suspect or evidently criminal advertising.
You can find out more on this topic and how to protect yourself in our article on “Investment fraud“.
