Australian financial expert ‘Barefoot Investor’ Scott Pape has revealed how he fought crypto scammers who hacked into his identity to con his followers.
The Australian reported on Dec. 23 that Pape and his team were reporting hundreds of fake Facebook groups claiming to be run by his image to trick people into scams.
One of the fake groups using Scott Pape’s name. Source: Facebook
Pape decided to engage with the scammers and explain their methods instead of waiting on Facebook to take down these groups since this could allow more scams to spread.
He took up a fake name on Facebook and asked for investment advice from the scammers
Within hours of contacting a fake Facebook page, he was solicited to share his phone number and then offered a chance to join an ‘exclusive’ WhatsApp group called the ‘DB Wealth Institute.’
Pape looked up DB Wealth Institute on Google and quickly sifted through a number of automated press releases about the ‘investing firm’ and even on Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and LinkedIn.
One press release notes that “DB Wealth Institute, founded in 2011 by Professor Cillian Miller, offers practical financial training and developed ‘AI Financial Navigator 4.0,’ integrating AI with big data to enhance trading strategies. By 2024, it had trained over 30,000 students from more than ten countries”.
US regulators and financial authorities had warned of such scams by “wealth institutes”
Pape added that further research also revealed that many US regulators and financial authorities had warned of fake ‘wealth institutes’ trading crypto through WhatsApp.
Such scams include a ‘professor’ who provides false trading signals to group members that they can invest their money in and an assistant who communicates with investors. As soon as the group realizes enough money has been gathered, it disappears with the funds, rebrands, and then goes after new victims.
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