Australian multi-millionaire and electronics entrepreneur Dick Smith has threatened to sue The Guardian Australia. Smith has alleged that the trustworthy media outlet has hosted fraudulent ads with fake interviews of him promoting a phony Bitcoin scheme.
Impersonation scams are among the most perilous threats within the cryptocurrency community. Typically, the fraudsters impersonate a famous person and run false ads claiming that he or she has invested in a particular crypto platform that generates substantial returns.
In the past, some of the famous individuals that had their names implicated included Elon Musk and Justin Sun.
According to a recent report, a similar thing has been transpiring in Australia. The name of local entrepreneur Dick Smith, founder of Dick Smith Electronics and Australian Geographic, has been used in numerous phony success stories.
The written interviews ran on The Guardian Australia with text that Smith had made significant ROI by investing in automated Bitcoin trading bots and urged other people to join “before it’s too late.”
Smith has been trying to fight off the fraudulent ads since the start of 2020. However, as he has seen little-to-no success, he decided to threaten the major media outlet with a defamation suit.
Smith’s legal team has requested The Guardian Australia to update its advertising algorithm to prevent such ads from appearing on its website again. The media outlet has fourteen days to provide a “satisfactory response,” or the legal team will push forward with the defamation proceedings.
“While we acknowledge that The Guardian Australia does take the fraudulent advertisements down once notified, that does not prevent [its] Australian readers from falling victim to this prolific cryptocurrency scam.” – commented Smith’s legal representative Mark O’Brien.
ABC Australia reported the story of an 80-year-old pensioner who fell for this scam during the summer of 2020. When seeing Dick Smith promoting this service, the pensioner telephoned the number listed and agreed to invest the first $500.
The scammers’ phone calls started coming more frequently and offered impressive returns if the 80-year old allocated even more funds. In six weeks, the unnamed victim transferred more than $80,000.
However, he saw none of the promised returns and realized it was a blatant scam. The pensioner contacted his bank to block the account and the police, where he reportedly received an answer that they were too busy to help.