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Public warned over criminals using celebrities to promote fake investments
Aug 14, 2020
Criminals are defrauding people into making fake investments using forged news stories promoting investment advice from celebrities, the public is being warned.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre, a part of intelligence agency GCHQ, has announced it has foiled a growing number of these scams over the last four months.
More than 300,000 malicious URLs linking to investment schemes promoted with fake celebrity endorsements, including Sir Richard Bransom, Ed Sheeran and Martin Lewis, have been taken down during this period.
But the growing number of investment scams has caused the cyber security agency to issue a warning to the public, and to let the criminals know that they are being pursued.
The agency's chief executive, Ciaran Martin, said: "These investment scams are a striking example of the kind of methods cyber criminals are now deploying to try to con people.
"We are exposing them today not only to raise public awareness but to show the criminals behind them that we know what they're up to and are taking action to stop it.
"I would urge the public to continue doing what they have been so brilliantly and forward anything they think doesn't look right to our Suspicious Email Reporting Service."
Earlier this year, Mr Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com,
Mr Lewis, who was given an OBE in 2014, said he was aware of a woman who had lost £100,000 as a result of a bogus advert featuring his face and initially made the lawsuit to force Facebook to tackle the advertisements.
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