Dick Smith, an Australian entrepreneur, has been targeted once again by crypto scammers through the use of his reputation and his likeness to push fraudulent crypto investment offers – but now, however, the advertisements have been published on a central news platform.
The advertisements have been published in The Guardian’s Australia news outlet, together with other ads that were posted on the aviation website pprune.org have used Smith’s image and likeness to defraud the soon to be crypto investors via scam offers and other unregistered schemes.
Although this scenario isn’t a new one, the entrepreneur’s image had been used to promote scams so often that the Australian explorer and business icon had formally dissociated himself from cryptocurrency investing thru Twitter.
Crypto scammers have impersonated the other celebrities from Australia were David ‘Kochie’ Koch, Michael Rowland, Karl Stefanovic, and also Virginia Trioli.
Dick Smith’s Legal Team Strikes Out
The fraudulent advertisements published thru The Guardian have linked the readers to the fake news articles that presented fake quotes by Smith, further stating that the entrepreneur invested in cryptocurrencies. The Australian reports that Smith’s legal team has approached the news outlet and instructs the news platform to remove the ads and further ensure that any offending advertisements are not published in the future.
“Mr Smith is determined to ensure the cryptocurrency scam promptly comes to a permanent end … While we acknowledge that The Guardian Australia does take the fraudulent advertisements down once notified, that does not prevent your Australian readers from falling victim to this prolific cryptocurrency scam.”
Misleading advertisements are related to criminal syndicates. It typically presents the images of Smith’s face together with Australian flags or associated imagery with the text “D. Smith scared Australian banks, he told how to make money easy (sic)” or “get rich in a few days; this method has helped thousands of Australians.”
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