Fake election news ads are luring people into investment schemes. We got some taken down
CBC
Fake CBC News articles that link to sketchy investment schemes are flooding social media with sensational headlines about the Canadian election and other recent political developments.
CBC's visual investigations unit reported on a similar scam in late January, where fake articles lured victims to Quantum AI, a well-known scam. But this latest generation of fake content has been updated to take advantage of new events with surprising speed. One fake article referencing a federal tariff relief initiative is dated March 23 — Prime Minister Mark Carney made a similar announcement days earlier, on March 21.
After CBC News reached out to Facebook parent company Meta and the Toronto-based company hosting one of the website domains, several of the Facebook accounts behind the ads were disabled and one website domain was suspended.
Clicking on one of the Facebook ads takes the user to a realistic-looking CBC News article. (Other news outlets have also been spoofed, though most of the ads seen by CBC News were purporting to show an article from the public broadcaster.) Read on, though, and the articles tout a "zero risk" cryptocurrency investment scheme.
In one case, the Facebook ads even featured an AI-generated deepfake video of CBC journalist Rosemary Barton, as well as Elon Musk, and Carney. In the fake video, Carney says the government has certified the safety of the alleged investment product and that "none of the investors will lose their money."
"All you need is to invest $350 and start making profit from the first month," the deepfaked prime minister said. The deepfake was created using manipulated video originally taken from Carney's Liberal leadership launch speech in January.
"There is not going to be a decline in the number of these soon, particularly with the election," said Marissa Sollows, director of communications for the Financial and Consumer Services Commission of New Brunswick, which issued warnings about the scheme this month.
"We are working certainly with our national and international counterparts, regulatory counterparts and enforcement staff at examining all kinds of different ways that we can look at disrupting and raising awareness of this — recognizing that it is such a Whac-A-Mole game. When you take one down, 10 more pop up."
Each fake article directs readers to a realistic-looking trading platform, such as Canada Crypto Fund, TrueNorth, or Token Tact.
The New Brunswick FCSC issued warnings about all three of those entities in March, warning they are "not registered to deal or advise in securities in New Brunswick."
The fake articles often were hosted under strange and unrelated URLs — marslandingjournal.com or gossipgiraffes.com, for example — while some were more convincing, such as cbc-politics.com.
One of the ads CBC News investigated was posted by a Facebook page called "Tokens Ailive." Clicking on the links in the article sent CBC News to two different sites claiming to be trading platforms at two different times.
The trading sites then ask users to make a minimum deposit — usually several hundred dollars — to begin trading, either by submitting credit card information or by calling a representative. That process closely resembles the Quantum AI scam previously investigated by CBC News.
CBC News also analyzed the websites hosting the articles and trading platforms.
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