Beware of fake celebrity endorsements

Cameron Nakashima joins producer/host Coralie Chun Matayoshi to discuss how to spot fake celebrity endorsements, how they try to trick you, and how to avoid getting scammed.

Cameron Nakashima is the Media Engagement & Digital Campaigns Manager for the Better Business Bureau and regular on KHON2 Wakeup 2day.

Q. Fake celebrity endorsements have been used by unethical businesses for decades. With advanced technology, fake endorsements have taken on new forms and become more difficult to identify and avoid. What is a celebrity endorsement scam?

It is a scam where businesses or con artists make it look like a celebrity supports a product when they actually do not. It’s a simple concept, but the bad guys have done some pretty complex things to pull off their schemes.

Q. How do these scams work?

You see a post on social media of a celebrity endorsing a weight loss product, health supplement, or another product. In the post, photos show the celebrity using the product, or a video features their voice talking about the amazing results they’ve seen. It sounds too good to be true, but the photos and video look so real! Also, the social media account appears to belong to the celebrity. So, you buy the product. In some cases, the best case scenario is that it is a real product, but the company used false advertising techniques to make you believe the product was endorsed by someone it was not. Usually, these scammers are trying to get you to click on their link and buy their product so they can get your money and personal information. When you buy the product, in most cases, the product was a fake, so you never receive anything after placing your order.

Q. How have these scams evolved over time?

As you noted at the beginning of this conversation, the idea of this scam is not new, but the execution is. I’ve got a quick story to illustrate this. Years ago, I had a vacation in Hollywood and there was this yogurt shop in a popular part of the town that advertised they were a “celebrity favorite.” Inside the shop, they had a TV playing on loop with pictures and videos of various famous people eating their yogurt. But it went a step further. In one of the shots, there was a video of Zach Efron, the actor from High School Musical and 17 Again. It showed him picking up a flyer from their yogurt shop off his windshield in a parking lot and waving at the camera. This was not Zach Efron enjoying their product or promoting it, but you could tell that was the point of the video. They wanted to make it look like he supported and advocated for their product. Fast forward a few years and this deception looks different. People start using programs like Photoshop to create photos that make it look like celebrities endorse their products. They’ll photoshop their product into the hands of a celebrity or make it look like the celebrity is a spokesperson for the product. In the past few years, deep-fake video editing techniques and AI have started to be used to make videos with fake celebrity endorsements. And it’s looking more convincing every year. To get an idea of how far this technology has come, you can look up the side-by-side video of Will Smith eating spaghetti. Both are made by AI but one is a few months old and the other is a year or two old. The difference and level of believability is night and day.

Q. What about offers for free products or 2 for 1 deals?

A recent example includes a scammer posing as celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and even Taylor Swift, endorsing free cookware. The link provided in the post is a counterfeit website where visitors are asked to provide payment details to cover shipping costs. In another example, one consumer reported ordering “Oprah Winfrey’s keto gummy bear supplements” after seeing a phony endorsement. They explained: “The ad showed Oprah’s face and featured her explaining the product and offering a first-time buyer discount of buy one bottle for $49 and get a second one free. I clicked on the link and put in my order. The next morning, I received an email stating my order had been processed for $198!” The company denied the customer a refund and shipped the product anyway. Upon arrival, they found the gummies were from a company that had no affiliation with Oprah Winfrey.

Q. How can people spot these scams?

Understand how AI-generated images work. With AI image generators, you can type in a few words describing the image you want to be created, and the AI generates an image based on your text. It’s valuable technology, but scammers can abuse it to create images to back up their stories, products, or outright lies. The point? Don’t assume a photo is proof that something is trustworthy.

Know that scammers often impersonate celebrities.Don’t assume celebrity posts, images, or videos are legitimate until you verify that they came from an official source. Just because something is shared widely on social media does not mean it’s real. Always do your due diligence before you purchase or reshare something you saw on social media. Look up the celebrity and the brand name and see if there are other legitimates posts with the celebrity and the brand or if scam articles come up.

Only do business with companies you know you can trust. If you have bought from them or worked with them before, that experience will help you know if you can trust the endorsement or not. If you have not worked with the business, look up their reputation. You can search them on Google and BBB.org. On the Better Business Bureau’s website, you can find their rating, if there are any scam reports or alerts filed against them, and if they are BBB-Accredited.

Q. What should you do if you identify a celebrity scam?

Do not click on the ad or go to the website. Instead, report it. If it is on a social media site, you can report it on the site. If it is a website you see, you can report the website to BBB’s scam tracker, to the FTC, and to the FBI’s cybercrime division.

To learn more about this subject, tune into this video podcast.

Disclaimer: this material is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The law varies by jurisdiction and is constantly changing. For legal advice, you should consult a lawyer that can apply the appropriate law to the facts in your case.

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