Google insists that it carries out checks on advertisers so that it doesn’t promote frauds, yet here’s an advert that leads to a blindingly obvious scam.
It came at the top of Google results when I used the search term “compare ISA rates” and led to a bogus Mirror online article.
“Brit Shocked Everyone By Revealing Platform Which Makes Him £23k Every Month,” ran the headline under the Mirror’s masthead.
Below was a supposed Mirror news story about an entrepreneur who had appeared on This Morning to reveal how he was making a fortune from online trading.
It should only have taken Google a second to realise that this was all made up, and not just because crime gangs have a long history of faking respected media sites - see for instance my article here. One glance at the top of the bogus Mirror article would have revealed that the url was not the genuine mirror.co.uk but ibitcoinprofit.com.
Links on the fake article led to a site promising “Bitcoin is making Brits rich! And you can become the next millionaire”.
This site did not give any details of the business behind it - another reason why it should never have been promoted. It also contained the same fake testimonials I've seen on other similar scam sites.
About the only thing I did believe was the warning in small print that, far from becoming the next millionaire, users stood to lose all their capital.
I contacted the web company that provided the fake Mirror online domain, UK-based Ionos, and it has now been taken down.
So why did Google Ads promote this blatant scam?
“We have been working in consultation with the Financial Conduct Authority for over a year to implement new measures and we are developing further restrictions to financial services advertising to tackle the scale of this increasing issue,” a spokesperson told me."
"We are the first technology company to join Stop Scams UK to develop and share best practices with existing members from financial services and telecoms industries.”
