Maltese social media has been flooded with a seemingly endless stream of scam posts over the past week, with some 200 different scam ads reaching hundreds of thousands of Facebook users, being posted since last Wednesday.

The posts all follow an identical, well-worn template. A well-known public figure is shown making an outlandish or unusual claim (“I have to face the truth”) or put in a shocking or eye-catching situation, enticing readers to click on a link that will take them further down the rabbit hole.

This series of scam posts takes a particularly dark and foreboding tone (“the tragic end of Angelo Xuereb” and “Robert Abela didn’t know that the microphone was on, we say goodbye to him forever”) in trying to grab people’s attention.

The posts open up to a cloned news website, more often than not the cloned Times of Malta homepage, presenting a fabricated interview between the public figure and a well-known journalist, in which they discuss the fraudulent crypto scheme.

The posts lead to a cloned news website, often that of the Times of Malta.

While these sorts of scams have become commonplace, the unprecedented scale in which they have been shared has escalated over the past weeks.

200 fake posts in a week

An exercise carried out by Times of Malta to monitor several social media accounts pushing these posts shows that at least 197 fake adverts have been posted in under a week, each of them pushing a variation on the same theme.

The adverts are being shared by bot accounts believed to be managed by people around the world, including the United States, Vietnam, Ukraine, and the Philippines. 

Other similar fake posts are likely to have been posted by other accounts that went undetected.

Many of these accounts have been used to push almost identical fake posts in several different countries, before moving on to Malta. Others which were active in recent days have already left Malta behind, now posting to countries such as Latvia and Ireland instead.

Other countries, including Canada, are in the scammers' sights.

The accounts frequently take on a fake identity to share their scam. One, Hager Ahmed, is named after an Egyptian theatre and TV actress, while another takes on the identity of the Indian actress Amita Pathak.

A third takes on the identity of John Amores, a Filipino basketball player whose claim to fame appears to be earning himself a lengthy suspension for instigating a punch-up during a game.

Others give the game away more easily, sticking to incomprehensible or gibberish names (Messifun1191, 俞心嵐Wing) or adopting the title of a generic-sounding business venture (Signature Wardrobe, Finance Flight).

A who’s who of Malta’s celebs

The list of public figures featured in the adverts reads like a who’s who of Maltese politics and popular culture over the last decade – from usual suspects like Robert Abela to TV personalities (Peppi Azzopardi, John Bundy and Daniel Chircop), journalists (Mark Laurence Zammit and Mario Xuereb), entrepreneurs (Anġlu Xuereb, Rachel Vella) and influencers (Sarah Zerafa).

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

The posts feature different popular figures, each in an almost identical predicament.

Each of them is in a similar predicament. They’ve accidentally blurted out the secret to their newly found wealth during a live broadcast and, before they know it, they’re painstakingly providing step-by-step instructions on how to sign up for a fraudulent crypto platform.

As always, photos of all the personalities featured are taken from publicly available sources including interviews, social media posts and TV programmes.

But scammers appear to have a clear view of their target demographic.

Adverts featuring the likes of John Bundy and Anġlu Xuereb, both of whom made their name throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, are targeted towards older Facebook users, while those featuring the likes of Sarah Zerafa and Daniel Chircop are directed towards younger viewers.

Can the police step in?

These scams raise an interesting quandary – what can the police do to stop them? The answer appears to be, not very much.

In replies to questions about similar scams over the past months, police have told Times of Malta that there is little they can do unless people report having been robbed through the scam.

Although scam reports to the police are on the rise, with €12.5m reportedly lost to scammers in 2023 alone, these are believed to be just the tip of the iceberg, with countless other victims suffering in silence.  

New EU-wide measures introduced in recent years had hoped to curb disinformation across social media. The EU’s flagship legislation, the Digital Services Act, placed the onus on platforms such as Facebook and X to flag fake posts on their platform, with many social platforms also pledging to combat disinformation by signing up to an EU-wide code of practice.

But disinformation experts say that this is mostly a case of lip service, with many platforms “reneging on their commitments and obligations”.