Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Royals ‘recruited’ in Bitcoin ad fraud Get-rich-quick con uses Harry and Meghan’s names to lure punters
HARRY and Meghan have become the latest famous figures to have their names hijacked by Bitcoin investment crooks.
Previous names used by scammers to promote their websites have included business leaders Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Lord Sugar.
More strangely, chef Gordon Ramsay, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and comic Jim Davidson have also had their names taken in vain, despite not being known for financial wizardry.
Now it’s the turn of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Click-bait gushes “Powerful message from Meghan” and links to what purports to be a BBC report about the couple appearing on This Morning – which is an ITV show – on which “the royals dropped a bomb”.
They supposedly told Phillip Schofield about a “wealth loophole” which can “transform anyone into a millionaire within three to four months”.
“We intend to step back as senior members of the royal family and work to become financially independent,” run the made-up quotes.
“What’s made us successful is jumping into new opportunities quickly and without hesitation, and right now our number one money-maker is a new cryptocurrency auto-trading program called Bitcoin Evolution.
“It’s the single biggest opportunity we’ve seen in our entire lifetimes to build a small fortune fast.”
If you click through to the website bitcoin-evolution.xyz the first thing you notice is a red banner warning that registration will soon close due to high demand, and there’s a clock counting down.
This is a sales ploy, the clock always starts with the same five minutes and 30 seconds supposedly remaining, however often you open the web page.
“Crypto is making people rich and you can become the next millionaire,” it claims, but the testimonials are fake.
One has a picture of someone named Mark K from Texas saying he’s only been in the scheme for 47 days and “I made my first $10K”. The same picture appears on another website, the-bitcoin-profit. com, only this time the name is Charles W. He’s from Massachusetts and says that his account “earns more than $14,000 monthly”.
Bitcoin Evolution says that members typically make a minimum profit of more than £1,000 per day.
As trading standards officers like to say, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
The site also promises no fees or commission: “All of your money is 100% yours.” The catch? You have to fund your account with an initial minimum of $250, or around £200, and judging by how similar websites operate, you’ll subsequently be harassed into putting in far more. Bitcoin Evolution gives no address, phone number or company registration details. I completed its registration form and was re-directed to eu.excentral.com, owned by Mount Nico Corp Ltd of Cyprus.
This makes no mention of Bitcoin trading, instead you would be gambling on so-called Contracts for Differences which, it fairly warns, “are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly”.
Given this honesty I thought it might want to comment on the unethical way in which potential customers are enticed.
The company told me that marketing was carried out by third parties and following my enquiry it has “immediately terminated every business relationship” with the company behind the Harry and Meghan lies.