Bitcoin Scammers Use Ads Featuring Martin Lewis Again

Crypto scammers roll out their ads with photos of British financial expert Martin Lewis to trick unsuspecting investors. Previously it caused Lewis to settle a defamation suit against Facebook for such Bitcoin (BTC) scam ads.

Instagram argues, that fraudulent ads are not allowed on its platform and plans to strengthen measures against similar content. Social media have censored crypto-related content, imposing blanket bans.

Facebook, however, lowered its standards, as its own digital currency project Libra is underway.

As many scammers use fake endorsements, some influential figures of the crypto figures do help spread similar frauds as legitimate investment projects. This often has terrible effect, adding the feeling of legitimacy to scams, which otherwise are obvious.

Suspected crypto scammers using sham endorsement from Lewis

As Bitcoin scam ads with sham approval from Martin Lewis resurface on social media again (now on Instagram), Lewis warned the public against them.

The ads sport a fake article from British news aggregator Mirror, titled “Martin Lewis lends a hand to British families with Revolutionary Bitcoin Home Based Opportunity.” There is no such article on Mirror, and the tabloid warned about similar forgery in August 2018.

The social media platforms fought desperately against the scam in 2019, with Facebook (the parent company of Instagram) representative stating, that the platform does not tolerate scam ads. The representative said the following;

“Misleading or deceptive ads of any kind, have no place on Instagram. Our Advertising Policies do not allow scam ads, and when we detect an ad that violates our Advertising Policies, we disapprove it. All ads are subject to our ad review system, which relies primarily on automated, and in some cases manual review to check ads against these policies. This happens before ads begin running.”

The Facebook spokesperson further added, that while scam adds may slip in, users should report them:

“We incorporate signals of negative feedback from people, such as people reporting, hiding, or blocking an ad, into our ongoing review process. When we find ads that try to get around our enforcement, we go beyond simply rejecting the ad. We disable ad accounts and remove their ability to advertise in the future.”

Lewis gets in trouble with Bitcoin scam ads not for the first time

Back in 2018, Lewis sued Facebook for about 1,000 ads featuring him. The case was settled with Facebook agreeing to donate $3.9 million to Citizens Advice, a Scams Action service in the UK.

Facebook also agreed to develop a scam reporting tool. Lewis commented:

“It shouldn’t have taken the threat of legal action to get here. Yet once we started talking, Facebook quickly realized the scale of the problem, its impact on real people, and agreed to commit to making a difference both on its own platform and across the wider sector.”

A similar situation happened in mid-2019 to Dutch billionaire John De Mol, whose images were used for scam ads in social media. The court took his side, urging Facebook to remove such content.

Scams with other public figures such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin, British actress Kate Winslet and Australian business mogul Andrew Forrest have also circulated in the past. Images were used to trick people into giving their money to scammers.

Is Facebook liable for damages caused by misleading content?

Alex Nguyen, a founding partner at law firm XNOVO Legal stated that holding social media platforms such as Facebook for scam content is a tricky matter. He explained:

“Subjecting the most ubiquitous social media platforms to secondary liability for their users’ illegal content or conduct is an arduous uphill battle, largely due to the broad application of the Communications Decency Act (‘CDA’) created by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The CDA allows a social media platform to avoid secondary liability for a user’s illegal content if a third party user originated the illegal content and the social media platform and its services merely served as a ‘neutral tool’ for creating such content.”

Nguyen stated that the protection against crypto scam ads can be deployed, if scam ads will be considered as third-party content.

Social media platforms are also often criticized for failing to filter out misleading information, especially political one.

The bulk of responsibility lies on users, who have to perform a research, not to take any information as absolute truth.

Can social media networks filter out misleading content completely?

De Mol’s case raised questions as to the capability of social networks to filter out all harmful content. Speaking to Bloomberg, Jens van den Brink stated that “De Mol seeks a perfecting filter that doesn’t exist.”

Blanket bans are of little help, as scammers manage to disseminate the ads anyway. This indicates, that filters employed by social media are not suited to wipe off scam ads entirely.

Facebook said that the company has both automated and manual content review protocols. Nevertheless, they do not hinder the scammers. Facebook states that it is taking measures to prevent publishing of malicious content on the platform.

Vikram Singh, managing director of enterprise blockchain firm Antier Solutions, believes that fraudsters will always find a way to bypass social media filters. He remarked:

“It cannot be overlooked that there are always ways around whereby changing some different terminology you can still bypass computerized algorithms. So in my opinion it is more of a case of when people get lured by immediate gains and which can happen in any industry so curtailing cryptos for the same can eventually become a roadblock in adoption and awareness of crypto and blockchain looking at the outreach of Facebook and Insta.”

NOVO’s Nguyen, though, thinks that Facebook and other social media platforms could do more to stop the dissemination of misleading content. He believes, that simple termination of an account is not enough:

“I think social media platforms are in the best position to implement better policies to identify and curb the continued proliferation of false or fraudulent cryptocurrency-related advertising ex ante, especially given their unfettered access to a tremendous amount of data, technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning) to make sense of all that data, and limitless resources.”

Are crypto influencers assisting investment scams?

As it was mentioned earlier, crypto influencers may create a halo of reliability around scams, especially when investors are not fully aware of the situation.

At the end of December 2019, a Bitcoin scammer dubbed “LÈON” has exited his Bitmex BTC fund with around 53 BTC (currently worth $424,000). Before that some famous people endorsed Leon’s investment project.

“Fraud has more to do with ignorance and lack of knowledge than any social media channel as a medium. Most of these cases occur to users who lack specialized expertise necessary to distinguish legitimate from an illegitimate offer,” remarked Singh. In order to avoid such scams users have to conduct thorough research, assessing the projects critically and minding due diligence when making investment decisions.