Scammers have targeted Robert Irwin with hoax Facebook ads which claim he has been arrested – as part of efforts to con Aussies out of their hard earned cash.
The hoax ads are fake mockups of major Australian newspaper front pages showing Robert Irwin being arrested, with his arms pinned behind his back, being led away by police.
The images are entirely fabricated and have been created using artificial intelligence to look authentic.
One hoax spreading on Facebook is a fake Sydney Morning Herald front page with the headline: ‘Is this the end of his career? Robert Irwin didn’t know the camera was still recording.’
It links to a fake news article that claims the Bank of Australia is suing Robert Irwin due to comments he made on live TV.
The fake news article describes a completely made-up incident during an episode of The Cheap Seats.
In this fictitious account, it is claimed that Mr Irwin revealed a nonexistent platform called Trade iPlex 100, which he supposedly said could make people rich through AI-driven cryptocurrency trading.
Readers are asked to give Mr Irwin $375 so he can make them money using cryptocurrency.
None of this is true. The incident, the platform, and the claims are entirely fabricated by scammers trying to take your money. Mr Irwin is not involved in any way.
The Australian government National Anti Scam Centre said scammers use the image, name and characteristics of famous people without their permission, to get you to ‘invest’ in cryptocurrency scams.
These can be very realistic, as scammers use artificial intelligence (AI) to create ‘deepfakes’ of the person. These images and voices can be very hard to recognise as fake.
The celebrities’ images are often used in ads on social media or YouTube, fake news stories that appear to be from a well-known news company.
How scammers are targeting Australians
Money lost to scams is tracking in the right direction even as fraudsters prey on the cost-of-living crisis to target people looking for side hustles.
An 11 per cent fall in total scam losses was clocked over the March quarter, the National Anti-Scam Centre said in a report.
Most of the improvement was led by shrinking losses to investment scams.
Yet with a sizeable $73.2 million lost to fraudsters over the three months and a slight uptick in the number of scams reported to the government body from the quarter before, Australia is facing an uphill battle.
Scammers were starting to exploit the cost-of-living crisis, the report found, by deceiving social media users trying to make extra money through second jobs or side hustles.
By posing as department stores, hotels or other companies, scammers have been drawing users in with offers of good pay and flexibility, and then asking for small payments to complete tasks with the promise it will be paid back later.
Younger Australians of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds were most at risk to this increasingly-popular scams, the centre said in its report.
Social media scams overall continued their upward trend in the March quarter, lifting 11.8 per cent.
But progress was made on losses to scams circulating on the platforms, down 10.7 per cent, from $15.9 million in October to December last year to $14.2 million in January to March.
Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said the scam crackdown, including the creation of the National Anti-Scam Centre last year, was working.
‘Scam losses are down first the first time in almost a decade since we released stage one of our strategy, but we have more to do,’ he said.
The federal government has been consulting on mandatory industry codes that would require digital platforms, banks and telcos to curb scam risk or face penalties.
Mr Jones said the codes would set a high bar for the key sectors.