Information about a new WhatsApp bot, which allows its users to receive large financial benefits in a short period of time is being disseminated on social media. According to Russian-language videos published by Facebook pages Наташа Данилова and Omnivore 53 on November 9 and 20, a new Bot is allowing people to trade on the stock market, and its positive side is that the program uses artificial intelligence to calculate risks instead of a person, and therefore, the user does not need any prior experience or additional time to receive money. In one of the videos, the Russian musician Andrey Makarevich talks about the positive aspects of the bot, while the second video shows a retired woman who allegedly got rich through the bot.
Videos circulating about the WhatsApp bot show signs of fraud. The site link required to register to use the bot does not match the official WhatsApp link, and the site itself was registered a few days ago. The published videos are altered and, in fact, none of the participants in the original videos talk about getting rich through WhatsApp bots.
Both of the published videos require customer registration to use the bot. In both cases, the requested information includes name, surname, phone number, and email. In one case, the registration link was created from the Facebook platform itself.
In the case of the retired woman’s video, a link is attached to the video, which leads to the website whtspeu.com.
Notably, the addresses of the official WhatsApp websites look different, For the first case, it is whatsapp.com, and when using the web version it is web.whatsapp.com.
As for whtspeu.com, according to domaintools, the website was created on November 16, 2023, 4 days before the video was posted, and its IP address is in Hessen, Germany.
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Who are the people shown in the video and what do they actually talk about?
The video published on November 9 features the famous Russian musician Andrey Makarevich. The video is from his most recent interview on October 17, 2023. Makarevich has been in exile since 2022 and has been opposing Putin’s government since 2011. TV channel “Dozhd” recorded an interview with him. In fact, during the extensive interview, Makarevich does not talk about getting rich through the WhatsApp bot.
As for the video where a retired woman talks about the easy way of earning money, the video is taken from the 2021 story of the Russian media outlet Россия 1.
According to the story, pensioner Olga Varozova became a victim of a fraudulent scheme and lost a large amount of money. For several weeks, Varozova was contacted by a person named Maxim Solovyov, persuading her to invest even more money, and in return, she sent a link to a fake platform, where the pensioner’s profit was supposed to be shown. In the video published by the Facebook page Omnivore 53, it is the parts of this story that are used and edited. The captions of the story are also falsified.
About the Sources
According to the description of the Facebook page Наташа Данилова, it publishes the main news about Natasha Danilova. However, the published posts are mostly of political content and refer to different countries, especially Israel. According to the description of the page, it is a financial service. The page was created on May 23, 2023, and has changed its name twice since.
This and other photos of the woman in the page’s profile photo are only found on online clothing sales sites.
The page actively uses the Facebook advertising function. A fraudulent video about a WhatsApp bot advertised by the page was being circulated on Facebook.
As for the Facebook page Omnivore 53, it was created on August 8, 2023. The information section of the page indicates that it is related to books and book distribution, but there are no posts of this or any other content on the page, except for profile and cover photos.
The contact information on the page features an American phone number. The page sponsors videos with fraudulent content.
Fraudsters often resort to video fabrication techniques using the names of different individuals. “Myth Detector” has detected other types of fraudulent schemes besides WhatsApp bot, see some examples below:
- THE NAMES OF GARIBASHVILI AND LUKOIL ARE USED TO ATTRACT PEOPLE TO JOIN ANOTHER FRAUDULENT SCHEME
- FAKE PAGES OF EURONEWS DISSEMINATE FABRICATED VIDEOS OF MARK ZUCKERBERG AND ELON MUSK
- ALTERED VIDEO IN THE NAME OF ELON MUSK CONTAINS SIGNS OF CYBER FRAUD
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