Claiming they are raising money for survivors of a natural disaster that has killed more than 40,000 people in two countries and left millions without shelter, food and water, the scammers transfer the donated funds to their own accounts, according to the Daily Mail. This is one of the methods used by scammers to extort money from users affected by the tragedy.
Reports published by Bleeping Computer, a cybersecurity news website, and the BBC, provide examples of scams experts have uncovered online. One account, which reportedly streamed live for more than three hours, showed a pixelated aerial view of buildings destroyed by the catastrophic quake. The image was accompanied by the sounds of buildings collapsing. “Let’s help Turkey. Donation,” reads the video’s caption. In the screenshot of the post, you can see a purple thumb with the word “donation” written on it, encouraging viewers to send money.
In another live video, a boy in a light blue hat and matching scarf was shown running from the destroyed building towards the surviving area. “Please help him reach this goal,” was the host’s message on the TikTok fundraising call.
However, the Google search function used by the BBC and recreated by MailOnline finds that the image was previously used in 2018, long before the earthquake, with a different caption: “Stop the Afrin genocide.” This is a reference to a town in northwestern Syria where Turkish forces and their allies in the Syrian opposition clashed with Kurdish militias in 2018. The scammers also used Twitter to exchange emotional messages along with links to cryptocurrency accounts asking for to users who donate.
According to the Greek newspaper OEMA, one of the images was generated by the artificial intelligence software Midjourney. In addition to other indications that the image is not a real photograph, the firefighter was seen to have six fingers on his right hand. It is not yet known how much money the scammers managed to steal, but according to experts we are talking about tens of thousands of dollars.
