Scammers exploit the name of the vice-president of the council to advertise a cryptocurrency trading platform that steals money from users
"Amazing way that helped Luigi recover from bankruptcy", "Luigi inspires everyone after revealing this opportunity on the TV show", "Luigi Di Maio earned 2.3 million euros and according to him anyone can do the same"". These are the titles of some news that have appeared in recent days on Facebook and posted by a group of accounts that refer to fake news sites.
The articles refer to hypothetical statements of Luigi Di Maio, Minister of Labor and Economic Development of the Conte Government, released to a famous RAI program in which he explains how he managed to earn in a short time more than 2 million euros thanks to cryptocurrencies. These are completely invented statements in which the name of the vice-president of the council is taken only as a pretext to make it all seem true. Luigi Di Maio has nothing to do with the scam engineered by these criminals, on the contrary he is the victim of identity theft.
The Bitcoin scam on Facebook
If on your Facebook profile you have read an ad with a title like "Luigi Di Maio has earned 2.3 million euros after bankruptcy. According to him, anyone can do the same. The opportunity to invest from home explained to Unomattina" know that it is a hoax. In recent days many ads have appeared on Facebook reporting the news that Luigi Di Maio has earned over 2.3 million euros by investing in cryptocurrencies and using an online trading platform of which we will not report the name in order not to make users fall into the deception. All ads lead to news sites that have become notorious in recent years for spreading fake news and advertising online scams. The cryptocurrency trading platform mentioned in the article is famous for making users lose hundreds of euros in commissions and market volatility.
In all this, Di Maio has nothing to do with it, he is just a victim of identity theft. In the last months many celebrities have been targeted by similar scams: football players, actors and TV hosts.
How to defend yourself against online scams
To understand that it is a scam does not take much: when the title of a news item is created specifically to make a user click, in many cases there is always something behind it. Moreover, in this specific case, the text of the article is full of grammatical errors, a sign that the scam was engineered outside Italy. Finally, a Minister of the Republic would never say on television that he uses an online trading platform to get rich.