Why you should probably look twice at that online ad for hand cream

Fraudsters are faking the endorsements of Canadian celebrities to sell skincare products Sabrina Maddeaux

Judge Judy isn’t exactly the kind of celebrity you’d expect to start her own beauty brand. So fans were understandably surprised when “news” articles headlined, “Judy announces she is leaving the Judge Judy Show” suggested she was departing daytime’s all-time No. 1 program, “to pursue her new skincare line and dream.”

The fact is Judy Sheindlin does not have a skincare line, nor has she ever endorsed one. She has, however, become the latest victim of the internet’s fake news problem. She took to Twitter for the first time in months to disavow the ads, writing, “I do not have a skincare line. The fraudulent company and criminal scammers who advertise that I do are trying to steal your money. Do not fall for this fake advertising.” The TV judge further advised fans to “Report them to the Attorney General of your state. Report them, as I am, to the FBI.”

Judge Judy is hardly the first female celebrity to fall victim to such scams. Similar ads have circulated touting everything from eye cream to weight-loss pills supposedly endorsed by the likes of Oprah, Meghan Markle, Nicole Kidman, Sally Field, Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Melania Trump and even Priscilla Chan, the wife of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. These fake news ads can be convincing at first glance, complete with doctored or out-of-context photos, fictitious quotes, fabricated reviews from other stars and elaborate background stories.

Often, the scams work by signing up customers for a free trial. As part of the signup process, the site collects users’ credit card details and applies them to a renewing subscription that’s difficult to cancel. In other cases, customers order products that never arrive.

While U.S.-based celebs have battled this issue for years, skincare scams have recently migrated north of the border. Over the last several months, Canadian TV personalities including Marilyn Denis, Tracy Moore, Cheryl Hickey, Tanya Kim, Dina Pugliese and Melissa Grelo have become victims of these unsavoury campaigns. Fake news ads claim these on-air talents have left their respective shows to start skincare empires. Over time, the fake news stories have become more malicious, making salacious claims to draw a reader’s attention, suggesting that the women were fired from their shows or had fallings out with their bosses over the miracle product.

Moore, host of Cityline, was bombarded with Facebook messages from viewers asking why she’d left the show and even received a call from her parents asking why she left her job. “Part of what concerns me is that who’s to say they can’t take a more sinister angle? They’re stealing your identity and there are so many people seeing these articles. Who’s to say they can’t say something like Tracy Moore passed away or Tracy Moore is being charged with X, Y, Z? Who knows where this might go?”

In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. announced plans to crackdown on these sorts of scams. They pressed charges against several companies, ultimately forcing them to pay a $6.4 million in fines. Somewhat perplexingly though, little attention has been given to the issue in Canada.

Actively trying to find a government organization willing to acknowledge the scams’ existence and take responsibility for addressing them resulted in being passed from agency to agency. When I contacted the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, which runs Consumer Protection Ontario, I was told scams fall “under the federal government through the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), so it would be best to reach out to the federal government on this.” When I then contacted the CAFC, I was told “the Competition Bureau of Canada may be better suited” to answer my questions.

Finally, the Competition Bureau acknowledged the scams and claimed, “The Bureau first addressed this issue in a 2014 consumer alert. This issue was explored in great detail in Volume 1 of our Deceptive Marketing Practices Digest.” However, when I read the years-old consumer alert and digest, neither actually addressed celebrity endorsement scams, but rather solely the rise in “astroturfing,” which is the practice of posting fake grassroots reviews. As far as I can tell, the Competition Bureau has never directly addressed the frauds.

“Someone needs to be held accountable at some point. I think it would be a much bigger deal if this was happening to men and their brands,” says Hickey. Whether intended or not, Hickey’s comments call to mind the time investment television personality Kevin O’Leary was falsely linked to offshore binary options trading platforms and software. The Ontario Securities Commission promptly issued a public Investor Alert.

It’s difficult to contrast the difference in reactions without noticing a whiff of misogyny. Skincare scams are treated as relatively lowstakes, victimless crimes in comparison to men being targeted by Ponzi schemes. However, both are dangerous. Not only are consumers spending their hard-earned paycheques on a product that doesn’t work, never shows up or may even contain harmful ingredients, targeted celebrities risk having their livelihoods derailed by these fake ads — particularly in smaller markets where the celeb-fan relationship tends to be more intimate. In some cases, onair personalities really do have fashion lines or beauty collections on the side and their business is threatened by links to unauthorized, substandard products.

Right now, Canadian female hosts and the broadcasters for which they work have mostly been left to solve the issue on their own. Michelle Crespi, executive producer and director of Bell Media Studios tells me that the organization has been working with authorities, the other affected networks and even a private security firm in an attempt to hunt down and bring these “bad actors” to justice. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been easy. “They’re creating multiple ad purchasing accounts, web domains, merchant accounts to try and get around the system and create many ads at once. When you think you’ve gotten one, they pop up with another,” she says.

As the issue balloons around the world, it seems relying on individual celebrities and networks to fight them is simply not enough. Pressure must be placed on authorities, regulatory bodies and digital platforms to aggressively tackle the problem. Or, perhaps, it’s time for the companies that deal in fake news and phoney endorsements to be made to appear before a certain television judge, who may have an idea or two on how to curtail their actions: Real cases. Real people. Fake news.