Bitcoin scams featuring celebrities are back, and this time they’re getting the royal treatment with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle used as the bait used to lure in potential victims. The Daily Mirror newspaper reports that the pair are the latest in a long line of famous names to have their images illegally used to create fake news stories that promote investment schemes that are nothing more than plain theft, although they have little to do with Bitcoin bar the name.
Investors Urged to Buy Into “Wealth Loophole”
The paper reports that readers are lured into the trap with innocent looking posts on websites made to look like a link to a news story about “the first Royal Family project”, combined with a “Powerful Message From Meghan”:
Marks are then taken to a fraudulent news story which has the royal pair divulging the secrets of their newfound financial independence – “a new cryptocurrency auto-trading program called Bitcoin Evolution.”
They are then supposed to have urged people to invest in the “wealth loophole” before “the banks shut it down”, apparently thinking that promoting the vehicle as an illegal loophole is the way to get investors flocking through the door.
The advert also features fake testimonials from people whose images appear on adverts for other similar fraudulent financial products, making it evident that this is nothing more than a scam to obtain money.
Bitcoin Evolution Operates from Scammer’s Playbook
Alongside pretending that celebrities are involved, Bitcoin Evolution uses all the tricks in the scammer’s playbook in order to get people to invest, including virtually guaranteeing returns and a warning that registrations will soon close due to high demand.
Despite ‘Bitcoin’ being in the name, the cryptocurrency is rarely mentioned in the piece, and the actual product is a Contract for Difference (CFD), the same kind of product supposedly traded by the Countinghouse scammers.
Similar ploys have seen a raft of celebrities used, from former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson to actress Kate Winslet. Some whose images have been used have taken to suing Facebook for allowing the ads on their platforms, although nothing seems to be able to stop the spread of these scammers’ activities, probably because they still make millions of dollars every year from them.
