Which Celebrities Are Used Most In Social Media And Ad Scams? Here’s Where Musk And Bezos Rank

Cryptocurrency scams are nothing new in recent years. Some scams pose as celebrities on social media and try to trick users into clicking malicious links or sending funds to wallets. Other scams use celebrity pictures and likenesses in advertisements.

Here is a look at some of the celebrities most commonly used in cryptocurrency-related scams.

What happened: One of the many problems Elon Musk has been criticizing the social media platform Twitter for years for its number of crypto spam accounts. Musk eventually bought the company in 2022 for $44 billion with a goal to help monetize the platform and curb spam and bot accounts.

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According to some reports, since the takeover, crypto scams have not been prevalent on Twitter. While scams may have decreased on Twitter, cryptocurrency scams continue to pop up elsewhere. Methods that individuals use to steal money also include non-crypto scams.

British bank Natwest published its annual “Celebrity Scam Super League,” which highlights the celebrities who made the most money for scammers.

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Here’s a look at the list:

peter jones: 285,209 British pounds, promotional items

Sir David Attenborough: 275,551 British pounds, Twitter

Piers Morgan: 232,238 British pounds, Facebook

Jeff Bezos: 158,873 British Pounds, Google Ad

martin lewis: 149,651 British pounds, Facebook

Elon Musk: £42,500, N/A

Bradley Walsh: 10,000 British pounds, Facebook

Jones stars in Dragon’s Den, the UK version of Shark Tank. According to the report, a customer responded to an article that apparently featured Jones in an interview.

Attenborough, a British broadcaster and popular storyteller, saw his likeness used in a fake ad on Twitter. The ad claimed that Attenborough makes six figures a month from stocks in gold, natural gas and oil companies.

Fourth on the list is Amazon founder Bezos, whose likeness was used in a Google ad. According to Decrypt, Bezos is the most lucrative one-off crypto scam on the list. Bezos saw his image used in a Google ad that highlighted a new crypto trading platform on Amazon as an investment opportunity.

Musk, CEO of Tesla and Twitter, ranks sixth on the list. His likeness was used in a crypto scam that stole over $50,000 from a consumer. The scam showed that Musk endorsed a crypto scheme and led the consumer to believe it was a well-known billionaire.

Related Link: Will the Real Elon Musk Please Stand Up: Another Twitter Bitcoin Scam

Why it matters: Natwest reported that investment fraud cost consumers £114.1 million in losses in 2022. Although this number is down 34% compared to 2021, it is still a significant amount as celebrities are often used for scams of this type.

“Criminals are using some of the UK’s most trusted and respected celebrity pictures to steal millions of pounds,” according to Natwest Scam Expert Stuart Skinner called. “I urge you to be extremely cautious about fake celebrity investment ads appearing online.”

Musk’s appearance on the list shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given his frequent use in crypto scams on Twitter and elsewhere. The Twitter CEO is also being targeted with emerging YouTube videos showing real footage of past interviews encouraging users to post Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) to get extra bitcoin back, a popular scam.

While Bezos and Musk saw their likenesses used in crypto scams in the UK, the other traditional money UK celebrity-related scams came under attack.

While cryptocurrency scams make big headlines when it comes to using celebrities without their permission, scammers use other, more traditional methods to steal consumers’ money.

A key takeaway could be the use of social media in many cases, with Twitter and Facebook being used in the seven biggest celebrity scams in the UK.

It is important for consumers to check who is publishing the information and whether it is correct. When something looks too good to be true, it’s often too good to be true.

Continue reading: British man pleads guilty to hijacking Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Joe Biden and others

Photo: Shutterstock

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