Many scammers who use famous people to con online users know how effective this can be. For obvious reasons, fans of celebs adore, respect, worship, and cherish them. These fans are willing to go to any length just to see, talk, or have a selfie with their favs.
Those who are not that crazy about superstars at least respect them and take their words very seriously. Based on this trust, many brands prefer to use big names, mostly in the entertainment industry, as their ambassadors because they know that people trust celebrities easily.
Hence, fraudsters have employed this method to scam people. We will show you 5 ways they do this so you won’t fall prey to their tactics.
5 Ways Scammers Use Celebrities to Con People
There are many ways scammers use celebrities to con people. However, we will be sharing 5 of the most common ones.
1. False endorsement of a brand
As stated before, people hold superstars in high esteem, and because of that, it is easy for people to trust them. If you want to market a product or service fast, use a popular person as the face of that product or service.
Many brands have seen how effective this is; therefore, even when a celebrity does not know anything about the product or service, people use their name or face to market the product. They do this by having the star’s picture on the billboards or displaying a video of the celebrity using the product on social media.
For example, MegaFon, a Russian company, used Bruce Willis in their advert without his approval. A similar thing happened when PaperSpace Co. used the voices of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Cruise in their product promotion.
2. Fake social media accounts
The best place fraudsters can use superstars to con people is through social media because it had over 4.95 billion users as of October 2023.
When fans see a social media account with the name and picture of their favorite A-lister, they are easily carried away with excitement. There are many reasons why a con artist will do this, but one of the most likely ones is to grow their social media following.
Christiano Ronaldo alone has almost 620 million Instagram followers, as do many big names like Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, and Kylie Jenner, just to name a few. So, people who want to grow their social media following create accounts with the names and faces of such people for their fans to follow them. You may think “But who would even buy this?” Some people do.
3. Emotional manipulation
Emotional manipulation is one of the most common tactics con artists employ to scam people, and female fans are mostly the victims of this.
Emotional manipulation is incubated on social media platforms, and there is no platform that these scammers do not use. They start by creating an account. This time, it is not to grow their following, but to get people whose emotions they can play with. The overall reason for this is to get money from them.
On the fake account, you will see several pictures of the celebrity, making you think the account is legitimate. The fake celebrity may follow you back or even DM you, further growing the excitement.
The easiest way to avoid falling for this trick is to ask the person behind the account for their phone number or email address and then reverse search it on Nuwber.
4. Fake giveaways
It is common thing for celebrities to do giveaways for their fans or social media followers, but when a fake celebrity is involved, there are never any real prizes.
There are many reasons why scammers use this method. The three common ones could be to grow a social media account, promote a particular brand, or defraud people. In their usual way, they have an account with a celebrity’s name and DP, and then they do a doctored video or a write-up promising money, a product, or a service for anyone who will follow the account or buy a particular product.
They may even show you videos or pictures of people who have received these giveaways, but all those people are either fake or part of the plan. Some of them send money for the product their favorite celebrity promotes but never get their money or the product.
5. Investment scams
Many scammers have used the names and faces of popular people to legitimize a fake investment opportunity and have defrauded people of huge amounts of money.
A good example was when fraudsters used the names of Deborah Meaden and Martin Lewis to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform. The fraudsters defrauded people of thousands of dollars before they were discovered.
They simply created an advert on social media and websites with a link that takes people to a full article detailing the investment opportunities with faces and alleged testimonials from these popular people, but in the end, everything turned out not to be true, and the two celebrities involved had no clue about the alleged investment.
Final Thoughts
Scamming using celebrities is a very inventive way of duping people.
That is why it is important to take a second look when a celebrity is involved in any investment deal, social media account, or advert, because false endorsements of brands, fake social media accounts, and investment scams are some of the common ways con artists use to dupe people. The other two are emotional manipulations and fake giveaways.
The main reason for choosing celebrities for this bad act is because people easily trust and respect them. Therefore, be on the lookout when dealing with famous people.