Brazilian Footballer, Bangladeshi Politicians and Media Identities Impersonated in AI Financial Scam

Mahzabeen Yousuf

An aspiring young Brazilian striker, Cauê Vinicius dos Santos, who made his debut in 2019, is found to be running paid advertisements on his verified Facebook page featuring Bangladeshi politician Barrister Rumeen Farhana. Turns out, it is all a hidden promotion for an AI-enabled crypto trading platform.

When browsing through his verified Facebook page, named Cauê Santos, it can be seen that his last post was made back in the year 2023, raising questions about the current ownership and active use of the account despite its verified status. On the surface, the ad seems to be a photocard claiming that Rumeen Farhana has made a statement on television that has grabbed people’s attention and caused a stir.

When clicking on the advertisements, the viewer is taken to an article that appears to be posted on Prothom Alo’s news portal. The article appears to be a recent interview from the podcast “Flow with Eza” with Eza Chowdhury. The interview was conducted after the expulsion of Barrister Rumeen Farhana from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The title of the article claimed that her fans staged a protest following the ‘controversial’ interview of Barrister Farhana. When scanning through the article, it is observed that the context appears to be about how Rumeen Farhana acquired a vast amount of wealth after investing in an AI-enabled platform. 

On the 22nd of January, 2026, on the very same page , a new advertisement was posted. However, this time it was done under the guise of The Daily Star, by placing the logo on a fabricated video. The video starts with Munni Saha sitting in a newsroom claiming that there is a new way of breaking the cycle of poverty, and Chief Advisor of Bangladesh, Dr Muhammad Yunus’s project is creating opportunities that are undoubtedly life-changing. 

In the next scene, Dr Muhammad Yunus is seen on a public stage delivering a speech. He speaks of an AI-enabled platform, and insists that the spectators sign up and invest in the platform. To make it more convincing the creators added two voxpops. 

This was done to display opinions of two individuals who have claimed to use the platform and managed to come out of the financial crisis. 

Clicking on the advertisement, it leads to two different links-  one of which leads to a site that is a replica of the myGov website, and the other is a duplicate of The Daily Star’s official site. The websites have one thing in common, and it is the promotion of one particular AI-enabled platform, ‘Agrogom Shompoto অগ্রগম সম্পত্ত’. 

On the fake website of myGov, the contents present the platform as a collaboration between Google Quantum AI and the Government of Bangladesh. The website also screens a Tax-Free Trading License, and two deepfake videos of Dr Muhammad Yunus guaranteeing the safety of the platform along with The Daily Star’s Editor and Publisher, Mahfuz Anam, promoting the platform. 

The Daily Star article claimed that the platform has been approved by the Islamic Council, as a new halal income system approved by the Islami Bank and the Government of Bangladesh. 

Now, here’s a detailed explanation of the actual scenario. With the assistance of fact-checkers it has been debunked: 

1. At the beginning of the video, we can see a deepfake clip of Munni Saha, one of Bangladesh’s renowned journalists. It appears too realistic at first glance. However, following multiple lawsuits, Munni Saha has stopped appearing on screen for almost two years.
2. The clip of Dr Muhammad Yunus happens to be taken from a real event, and extracted from the video “Prof. Muhammad Yunus: A World of Three Zeros – The New Economics of Zero Poverty” uploaded on the channel of Smart City Expo World Congress back in the year 2018. With the help of AI-voice cloning, the speech has been changed to fit the narrative. 
3. The two voxpops being AI Slops (Low-quality AI Content) are quite evident.
4. There was no evidence on the myGov website, nor any article found on The Daily Star official page, or site. 
5. Final verdict, all of the contents are a hoax and a clear display of organised misinformation activity shared on Facebook to lay a clever trap to persuade people to invest on AI-enabled financial platforms that are most definitely a scam. 

The Daily Star took to their official Facebook and made a post confirming that the video with The Daily Star logo was not one of their creations. 

The ones operating behind the advertisements:

The agenda here is to sell the idea of how investing in AI-enabled financial platforms can allow an individual to earn more than their usual income. The most striking factor about these advertisements is that they are not operated from Bangladesh. For instance, it has been traced that the account of Cauê Santos is operated from both Vietnam and the United States. So far, there are no traces of the identities of those who curate such advertisements. On the other hand, the other pages are neither being operated from Bangladesh. However, due to their large number of followers from Bangladesh, they have created advertisements using well-known public figures from this country.

How this scam works:

1. The first step is to persuade the audience by creating a narrative that appears to be convincing.
2. Then they take readers to AI-enabled platforms that are rated ‘Poor’ trust score by ScamDoc, due to being recently registered along with having a year left before it expires, also lacking verification.
3. When people click on the link of the assigned platforms, it leads them to sign up by providing their personal information. This can possibly lead to scammers acquiring data about an individual’s identity (Address, Phone, and identification details). These can be potential ways of data hacking.
4. It is essential to sign up by investing approximately 30,000 BDT, and they also provide the options to pay via VISA, bKash, and Nagad. Therefore, it is a trap that paves the way for allowing financial fraud.

The aforementioned cases are not isolated events, as there are various pages that circulate similar scams. This demonstrates how Artificial Intelligence, advertising systems, and politicians and trusted media identities can be utilised to form a conglomeration to be weaponised together to gain the trust of the readers in order to extort their finances and personal information. It can also be observed that the methods followed to create these advertisements go against the policy guidelines of Meta. 

This leaves the question: how does Meta allow the dissemination of such advertisements despite those going against the community guidelines?

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