Why There’s Confusion Over Crypto Scam Ads ‘On TV’

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When I speak to people who’ve fallen victim to a crypto scam one of the first questions I ask is ‘how did the scam begin?’.

The most common responses are ‘I met some online and we got chatting’, ‘someone messaged me at random over WhatsApp’ or ‘I saw an advert on Facebook’.

But every so often someone who replies: ‘I saw it on TV’.

At this point I always query them as, to my knowledge, crypto scammers have never been able to get airtime on mainstream television channels.

Often they’re adamant that they watched someone describing an ‘amazing’ crypto investment which was ‘guaranteed’ to dramatically increase in value in just a few short weeks.

It’s important to state here that any scheme that claims it can ‘guarantee’ huge returns in crypto – or anything else for that matter – will be a scam. All investment carries with it some risk meaning profits are never guaranteed.

But if such a scheme were to appear on television might it be enough to convince even the most ardent sceptic that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity?

Perhaps so, but it’s simply not the case that these adverts are appearing on TV.

What I believe is happening is that the victims of these scams are watching carefully faked videos on social media and juxtaposing this with television.

Often these ads feature deepfakes of popular celebrities, newsreaders or presenters so it’s easy to see where the confusion lies.

The viewer is used to watching these people on television so they later assume that’s where they saw the endorsement for the crypto scheme.

But celebrities to do not endorse crypto scams, especially not on television. Even if they wanted to, it wouldn’t be possible due to various laws governing broadcast content, together with the team of program editors and producers who’d stop them.

So, once again it appears that social media is at the heart of what is a multi-billion-pound problem.

I’ve already written about how I feel Meta isn’t doing enough to crack down on scam investment adverts on Facebook, but there are other culprits as well.

WhatsApp, another Meta platform, is commonly cited by people as the origins of a scam, often after they received a message ‘at random’ which then leads to a conversation and ultimately pressure to invest in a fake scheme.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, much more needs to be done by the social media giants when it comes to cracking down on scam adverts (and other harmful content for that matter).

It’s wrong that they should continue to profit from content that is directly responsible for ruining the lives of many people each year.

The regulators and advertising standard agencies need to crack down much harder on the platforms if they fail to protect their users from these adverts, and the only way to do this is to hit them where it hurts most – their pockets.

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