TV presenter Matt Shirvington has warned viewers to avoid a financial scam based on a fake interview between him and Sam Kerr that has already cheated some out of thousands of dollars.
Scammers have been exploiting the name and image of Matildas captain Sam Kerr in a phony interview trying to convince people to sign up to a fake online trading platform.
The fake interview circulating online pretends to be based on a Sunrise segment where host Shirvington argues with Kerr about a bogus claim that she made money by investing on the platform.
“You don’t believe me? Give me 375 dollars and I’ll make a million with it in 3–4 months!” the fake article claimed the soccer star said.
Sunrise’s consumer correspondent Shaun White revealed on the program on Monday that Seven had received multiple emails from concerned viewers who had responded to the scam.
“Some people have lost $10,000,” he said. “Others are asking whether it is a scam or whether it’s real. Just to be clear — it is not real.”
Shirvington implored viewers: “Do not click on the links — that is the only advice I can give you.
“As many times as you ask the social media companies to report it, to pull it down, it pops up somewhere else. The only way is to protect yourself.
If it looks fake … or if there’s not a phone number you can call or if it’s not someone you can go to and speak to at the bank — don’t do it, you’ll lose your money.”
The scam is another variation on the increasingly common fake news articles or “deepfake” scams that use images of celebrities to persuade people to part with their money.
White said the premise of such scams was to use familiar faces to set up trust, then once that rapport was established, they would ask for around $250.
“They’ll start a small investment to build that trust, then they might get you to download a third party platform, and then once that’s happened you’re in a fair bit of trouble because they’ve got access to you,” he said.
“They might even show you fake profits, and then that’s when they’ve really got you and will try to milk through small investments continually.
“And why it’s such a cruel scam is that people want to believe that it’s real, so they’ll keep going bit by bit.”
Images of mining magnate Gina Rinehart and former Sunrise host David Koch have also been used in cryptocurrency scams advertised online.
The latest fake article was being used to advertise fraudulent trading platform Immediate Cipro 2.0, while a previous near-identical article also used Kerr’s name to push another bogus platform called Quantum AI.
The National Anti-Scam Centre last month revealed online investment trading platform scams based on celebrities and fake news articles had cost Australians $8 million last year.
It said known fake trading platforms included Quantum AI, Immediate Edge, Immediate Connect, Immediate X3, and Quantum Trade Wave.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy chair Catriona Lowe urged people to do their research before investing money.
“Scammers are creating fake news articles and deepfake videos to convince people that celebrities and well-known public figures are making huge sums of money using online investment trading platforms, when in fact it is a scam,” she said.