presenter
“Naga Munchetti: This is the most humiliating day of my life. Yesterday’s news shocked the whole of the UK.”
The headline was enough to make me want to read more – but the fact they had spelled my name wrong made me immediately question the credibility of the journalism involved – if there was any.
I’m used to seeing misleading articles about myself online, but the screenshots I’ve been sent by friends and followers on social media in recent weeks are a lot more insidious than most.
Paid-for advertisements are popping up across X and Facebook, some including crudely mocked-up images of me naked – my face badly photoshopped onto someone else’s body.
I was both mortified and bemused, curious about who would pay good money to spread such obvious nonsense. And what was their motive? Is it something malicious? Someone with an axe to grind?
I discussed it with my 5 Live production team, and we began to dig into it more. It soon became apparent that my name and image were being used by scammers to try to hoodwink people out of money.
Clicking on the adverts took you through to a fake news article, complete with logo and imagery.
The fake article about me suggested I had been detained by the government following a “controversial” interview on ITV’s This Morning, where I allegedly gave details about a “lucrative loophole” to make money.
It was made to look like a News article, complete with logo and branding, and it contained links to a scam cyber trading website, which has now been taken down after my production team reported it to the legal team.
I’m not the first high-profile face to be used by scammers to trick people out of their hard-earned money.
My fellow 5 Live presenter and Money Saving Expert, Martin Lewis, has previously spoken out about his face being used to front cryptocurrency scams.
Wildlife TV presenter Chris Packham told me he first saw fake articles about himself appearing on social media two years ago.
He recently opened an account with Bluesky and within hours saw fake accounts re-posting these scams from other platforms.
Packham said the posts on Bluesky were a bit more sophisticated in that scammers set fake accounts, found people within his professional circle and contacted them asking for donations towards a non-existent “conservation fund”.
“What they’re doing here is taking the authority, the integrity, the credibility of the and, not in an immodest way, ourselves,” he said.
“It’s extraordinarily offensive and worrying, I loathe the idea vulnerable people could potentially be exploited [by my image].”
Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which?, said one of their reporters had signed up to a website linked to from a false advert, similar to the ones written about me and Chris, and was “bombarded” by calls from somebody encouraging them to invest their money.
The registered addresses for the scam investigated by Which? all appeared to lead to Reyjkavik in Iceland, and even a car park there.
Their reporter could sometimes hear other people making calls in the background, which suggested it was a call centre.
Barber said her team spoke to people losing several hundred thousand pounds to these scams.
“There’s a massive red flag in that they’re telling you to invest right there and then – no real investment firm would ever do that to you,” she said.
The fake photos and articles being spread around online are mildly upsetting, but my main motivation for speaking out about them is to try to stop anyone handing over any money or personal information to these scammers.
I was lucky that the legal department were able to use copyright law to have the website taken down, but I’ve been told another website is likely to pop up soon enough, and getting ads taken down from X has become more difficult since it changed ownership.
Meta, who own Facebook and Instagram, said: “People who impersonate others on Facebook and Instagram violate our policies, and we remove this content when it’s found – like we are doing in this case. We continue to invest in technology to improve our detection and enforcement against scams and work with law enforcement to prosecute scammers.”
The also contacted X and Bluesky for comment.
I hope that raising awareness of this scam may at least make it less worthwhile for the criminals involved, and it serves as a useful reminder to not believe everything that you read about me – and be careful what you click on.
Listen to Naga Munchetty on 5 Live and Sounds, Monday – Wednesday from 11:00 GMT.
