Neymar and Anitta have image used in Subway Money scam – 01/15/2024 – Tech

Criminals have used the images of celebrities to promote a fake game used to carry out scams. The material promises easy money to users, in exchange for an initial payment and personal data.

To do this, scammers use artificial intelligence to create videos starring famous people, so-called deepfakes. Content circulates with the voice and image of striker Neymar, singer Anitta and influencers Carlinhos Maia and Virgínia Fonseca.

To the supposed recommendation of celebrities, the fraudsters add images from the popular game Subway Surfers, with crude edits to indicate false winnings in Brazilian currency, the real.

In the original game, the currency is fictitious and there is no payment for user performance. Subway Surfers has more than 1 billion downloads on Google’s Play Store alone — Apple does not disclose information about application demand.

The report found 88 fraudulent publications in Meta’s ad library — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In these cases, social networks receive money to increase the reach of content used in scams.

In addition to photos of celebrities, there are images of real bills, barbecues and drinks to highlight the money supposedly earned with Subway Money.

Most of these ads lead to a website called Royal Bet, which features images of other popular games, such as Fruit Ninja, Super Mario and Angry Birds. This portal asks for user data, with the promise of using the CPF to send money via Pix.

At the virtual address, there are promises of a transfer of R$500 and even iPhones.

Whoever registers, in fact, gets access to a pirated version of Subway Surfers, but, to release the supposed prizes, the Royal Bet website charges between R$30 and R$100, according to an investigation by the cybersecurity company Kaspersky.

In comments on social media, several users claim that they were unable to recover the amounts they supposedly had in their Subway Money accounts.

G1, which revealed the scam with emphasis on a deepfake by TV Globo anchor Cesar Tralli, says it found more than 700 pieces of content mentioning Subway Money in Meta’s ad library.

A Sheet showed in October that scams with deepfakes of celebrities were already circulating abroad and also used images of ordinary people to deceive the victim’s friends.

Publishing ads to deceive the public and using artificial intelligence in videos and audios without informing the audience are two practices that violate Meta’s standards for advertisers. There are, however, advertisements for the fake game dating back to December 6th, such as a deepfake by funk artist Mc Ryan SP recommending the game.

On Google, the search for Subway Surfers displays ads for the fraudulent game Subway Money before the official website of the mobile game.

Posts about Subway Money also circulate on X, formerly Twitter, and on TikTok.

On the short video social network, there are publications from November still online, although the use of deepfakes to deceive the public constitutes a violation of the platform’s rules for the use of artificial intelligence.

On X, three users complain of having lost money to the scam.

A Sheet Meta states that “activities that aim to deceive, defraud or exploit third parties are not permitted on the holding company’s platforms, which is always improving its technology to combat suspicious activities.”

The company recommends that people report any content they believe goes against Facebook’s community standards, Instagram’s community guidelines, and Meta’s advertising standards through the apps themselves.

In a note sent to the report, TikTok says that it does not allow the promotion of gambling or attempted fraud or deceiving members of the community. “When identified, these contents are removed from the platform.”

TikTok also said it will evaluate whether videos about Subway Money uploaded by Sheet violate platform guidelines.

Wanted by SheetX and Google did not respond until the publication of this report.