Deepfake investment ads: how to spot celebrity scams

You're scrolling and a well-known business leader, cricketer or TV news anchor appears, recommending a trading app, a "government-approved" investment scheme or a crypto platform that promises guaranteed daily returns. Several well-known Indian business leaders and anchors have publicly warned that videos like these of them are fake. Here's how to recognise them.

How these scams are made

Scammers take real footage of a famous person, often from an interview or a speech, and replace the audio with a cloned voice reading a script. The lip movements are then edited to match. Sometimes the whole person is generated. The video is run as an ad or posted from accounts that look like news channels, and links lead to a fake news article and then a sign-up form or a WhatsApp group.

Warning signs in the offer

• Guaranteed or very high returns, like "earn ₹50,000 a day" or "triple your money in a month". Real investments never guarantee returns.
• Urgency: "only 100 places left", "offer ends tonight".
• A celebrity personally recommending a little-known app or scheme.
• Payment to a personal UPI ID or bank account, or a request to install a remote-access app.
• A WhatsApp or Telegram "investment group" with screenshots of members' profits.

Tells in the video itself

• The voice sounds slightly flat or robotic, or has a different accent or pace from the real person.
• The lips drift out of sync, especially on "p", "b" and "m" sounds.
• The mouth area looks blurrier or smoother than the rest of the face.
• The person barely moves their head or hands while talking.
• The video never appears on the person's verified accounts or on any real news site.

For more general tells, see 12 signs a video is AI-generated.

Check before you click

1. Search the person's name with "fake" or "deepfake". Celebrities and companies regularly warn about scams using their likeness.
2. Check their verified accounts. A real endorsement will be there. A fake one won't.
3. Check the regulator. In India, investment advisers must be registered with SEBI, and you can search its register of intermediaries. Unregistered "advisers" and apps are a major red flag.
4. Scan the video. Paste the link into Video Verifier. The scan checks the voice, the frames and the motion, and shows where it found signs of AI. A Deep Scan listens to the whole soundtrack.

No real celebrity, bank or government department will ask you to invest through a video ad, a WhatsApp group or a personal UPI ID.

If you've already paid

Act quickly, because the first hours matter:

1. Call the cyber crime helpline 1930 or report at cybercrime.gov.in.
2. Call your bank to report the fraud and try to freeze the payment.
3. Don't pay any "fee" to release your profits or recover your money. "Recovery agents" who contact you are usually the same scammers.
4. Save screenshots of the ad, the website, the chats and your payments.

Help others avoid it

Report the ad on the platform as a scam, and warn your family groups, particularly older relatives who may be less familiar with how convincing these videos have become. Our guide to voice cloning scams covers the phone-call version of the same trick.