A father-of-one who was scammed out of £75,000 after falling for a deepfake Martin Lewis and Elon Musk advert, has warned people to remain vigilant of fraudsters.
It comes as Facebook owner Meta announced they would be introducing facial recognition technology to crack down on scammers who use celebrities in adverts.
The kitchen fitter from Brighton was scrolling through Facebook last year when he came across a fake ad promoting a non-existent bitcoin investment scheme.
The ad was fronted by tech billionaire Musk and Lewis, with Artificial intelligence (AI) being used to manipulate the money saving expert’s real voice to look like he was doing a TV interview from his house.
Des, who is a self-employed tradesperson, told Good Morning Britain he saw the advert as an opportunity to earn some extra cash before Christmas.
But he ended up taking out four loans totalling £70,000 in order to keep investing in the scheme and still owes around £20,000 following the ordeal.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain this morning, Des told Susanna Reid and Ed Balls that he is now considering filing for bankruptcy.
He said: ‘Now I see how stupid I was, how blind I was, I’m normally the type of person that would say to other people ‘that doesn’t sound right’.
Des Healey, from Brighton, was scrolling through Facebook last year when he came across a fake ad promoting a non-existent bitcoin investment scheme
The ad was fronted by tech billionaire Musk and Lewis, with Artificial intelligence ( AI ) being used to manipulate the money saving expert’s real voice
Des, who is a self-employed tradesperson, told Good Morning Britain this morning he saw the advert as an opportunity to earn some extra cash before Christmas – he is pictured with his son Derren
‘But these people…someone once described it as being under their spell and I think that was probably the best term. I knew in a way something wasn’t right but I hoped that it was okay.’
Yesterday, Des spoke to the real Martin Lewis on BBC Radio 5, who said he ‘has this weird accolade of being the most scammed face in Britain’.
Martin Lewis said: ‘I find this devastating. I’ve spent my entire career trying to help consumers and these criminals, these thieves, these organised crime people have perverted my reputation.’
Des responded to the initial advert and was put in touch with a man who claimed his name was Carl and had over 20 years of experience as a financial advisor.
‘Carl’ set up an account for Des with the e-money firm Revolut, which has nine million customers in the UK, and took a £1,000 investment.
Des was told by Carl that ‘profitable months’ were coming up and they would earn more if they invested the money ‘as soon as we can’, the BBC reported.
Martin Lewis appeared on GMB this morning and BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday and said he had a ‘weird accolade’ of being the most scammed face in Britain
The advert featured a picture of tech billionaire Elon Musk to look as though the bitcoin scheme had been endorsed by him
Trusting what Carl had to say, Des then transferred the entirety of his life savings into the account — a total of £5,000.
Des told the BBC he wasn’t allowed to withdraw anything until Carl said he could.
The 5,000 was then transferred to the Resolut account by Carl under the guise it was being invested.
It wasn’t until Des’ son Derren heard his father on the phone to Carl that things started to change.
Derren told GMB he was ‘getting suspicions’ when the scammer started asking who he was in an attempt to separate Des from his family.
Eventually, Derren threatened to call the police on his father unless he contacted his bank.
Derren described the situation as ‘seeing someone you know in a toxic relationship’, where ‘you can’t understand how they can’t see what you’re seeing’.
Martin Lewis said Des was ‘brave and admirable’ for telling his story as a warning to others.
He told the BBC: ‘Falling for scams does not make you a mug, it makes you a victim, but it doesn’t make you a mug. The people doing this are psychologically adept at manipulating us, use huge online and intellectual resources in order to steal our money.’
Since reporting the scam to the police, two of the banks Des took out money with have cancelled loans with them.
A spokesperson for Revolut said it was sorry to hear about any instance where ‘customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals’.
The statement added: ‘Revolut works hard and invests heavily to protect our customers as best we can through our fraud prevention technologies, analysing over half a billion transactions a month.’
