Lesson 9 - Fake Endorsements & Deepfake Promos

How it works: Scammers forge celebrity/brand endorsements—tweets, videos, livestreams—to compress your decision time and borrow trust. Deepfakes clone faces/voices; copycat accounts post “limited giveaways.” Links lead to fake claim pages that request wallet approvals (e.g., setApprovalForAll) or collect deposits. If you connect, sign, or send, the funds move.

Spot it

• Posts you can’t find on the celeb/brand’s verified channels; new handles with old avatars; comments locked.
• Links to unfamiliar domains, URL shorteners, or look-alikes (brandname-promo[.]io instead of the official domain).
• “Live giveaways” requiring you to send first or approve tokens to “claim.”

What to do

• Cross-check on the official site and verified socials; if it isn’t there, it isn’t real.
• Never approve broad permissions or send funds to receive funds. If you connected or signed, revoke approvals and move assets to a fresh wallet.

How It Plays Out

It feels like a gift: a late-night video where a famous founder smiles and says the project is giving back—“scan the code, claim the bonus, we’re matching contributions for the next 15 minutes.” The voice is right, the jacket is familiar, the background looks like last month’s keynote. The chat scrolls with thank-you messages and transaction IDs that blink by before you can read them.

You pause the screen. The lips are a hair out of time with the words. The eyes blink on a metronome. When the head turns, the collar warps for a frame. Small things, easy to miss when you’re excited. The account name has the logo, but the handle tacks on an extra letter. The video is “live,” but the official profile on another tab is posting about a different event, and there’s no cross-post, no retweet, no pinned announcement—just silence where a real campaign would be loud.

The link resolves to a claim page with a timer. The button opens your wallet and asks you to sign. Not a simple message—an on-chain approval that lets a contract move your tokens. The text is dense by design. You click reject and the page pivots: “To speed up, send a small deposit to verify.” That’s the second mask. Real projects don’t need your deposit to give you something.

If you already connected a wallet, act like the door is open. On a clean device, move funds to a new wallet. Use an approval viewer to revoke token allowances for the contracts you touched. If you sent funds, there’s no recall—document everything and report the domain, video, and handles to the platforms involved. Then bookmark the official sites and train your reflexes on a single move: verify at the source before you touch the wallet.

Pocket anchors: If it’s not on the official channels, it’s not real. Giveaways that require sending aren’t gifts. Approvals are power—don’t hand them to strangers.