Investigation: the celebrity “attacked”, arrested or cut off live, the scam hook
In this article
In short: many investment scams no longer just say a celebrity recommends a platform. They now tell a story about an invented event: a shooting, an assault, a hospital stay, an arrest or an interview cut off live. The event explains why “nobody is talking about this” and pushes you to sign up fast. Going through the ad screenshots from November 2026, we found these stories in Switzerland, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Colombia and Nigeria. None of them appears in the real press.
What we found
Our contributors click on investment ads featuring celebrities and save a screenshot of the page they land on. We read the text of those screenshots and looked for words such as hospital, shots, arrest, threat or interruption. Then we searched for each event on Google and in the press of the country concerned.
| Story | Celebrity | Country | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shots fired at his car on the A1 motorway near Zurich | Peter Spuhler | Switzerland | Quvanel |
| Attacked by three hooded men in a Toronto car park | Kevin O’Leary | Canada | Finantrix Forge |
| Leaves La Fe hospital with a bandaged head after an “attack” | Juan Roig | Spain | Stream Sys Eprex |
| Arrested over what he said on a TV show | fictional journalist | France | Swaptairis |
| Interview cut off by the production team mid-broadcast | Pablo Motos, José Elías | Spain | Valimórica |
| Security enters the studio to throw the guest out | Flavio Briatore, Fabio Fazio | Italy | Prompt Iplex Ark |
| “The bankers threatened us” | Abelardo de la Espriella | Colombia | Evo Plata, Nexo IA and others |
| “Politicians threatened me with violence” | Sade Adu | Nigeria | GemFlow |
We searched for the shooting of Peter Spuhler, the assault on Kevin O’Leary and the hospital stay of Juan Roig: there is no real news story about any of them. They are texts written by the scam network and posted on copies of newspapers.
The shooting that happens “yesterday” every day
The Swiss case shows that the story is a template. The page imitates Blick and begins like this: “Yesterday at 20:10, a motorcyclist in a black helmet fired several shots at a black Range Rover on the A1 near Zurich. The victim: Peter Spuhler.”
We captured that same page four days in a row:
| Screenshot | What the text says |
|---|---|
| 3 November | “Yesterday, Monday 2 November, at 20:10” |
| 4 November | “Yesterday, Tuesday 3 November, at 20:10” |
| 5 November | “Yesterday, Wednesday 4 November, at 20:10” |
| 6 November | “Yesterday, Thursday 5 November, at 20:10” |
The page fills in the date depending on the day you open it. So the event is always recent. The time, the motorway and the car never change.
The Canadian version does the same with Kevin O’Leary: “late on Thursday 5 November”, three hooded men attack him in a car park. The text adds a detail to make it believable (his driver ends up in hospital) and finishes on the platform that supposedly bothered someone.
Why they tell a story about an event
The event story does three jobs:
- It explains the silence. If it is so good, why is it not in the news? Because “someone” wants to cover it up: the banks, the government or a TV network.
- It turns the celebrity into a victim. The reader feels sympathy and wants to “support” them by using their platform.
- It creates urgency. If they have been attacked or arrested, the platform could shut down at any moment. “Sign up today”.
The “cut off” interviews follow the same script. The page imitates a live report, with times: “FIRST INTERRUPTION — 19:52”, “SECOND INTERRUPTION — 23:01”. The studio phone rings, a producer or two security guards come in, and the celebrity only has time to say the name of the platform. In Italy we found this scene on two different pages, from 5 and 6 November, and in Spain on another one from 6 November.
Always with a well-known outlet
These stories are almost never published on their own. They appear on copies of real media: Blick in Switzerland, El Tiempo in Colombia, laSexta in Spain, CBC in Canada, Rai News in Italy. Sometimes they even credit the photo to an agency (“Photo: EFE”).
The address gives the copy away. The page about the “attack” on Juan Roig was not on laSexta’s website, but on lasextanews[.]com, a domain with nothing to do with the channel. We explain this in what the links in ads reveal.
How to check a story like this
- Search for it elsewhere. A shooting targeting a well-known businessman would be in every newspaper. If it only appears on the page the ad took you to, it is fake.
- Look at the address. The real outlet has its usual domain. A copy uses a similar one or an unrelated one.
- Open it again on another day. If the event is still “yesterday”, the date is generated automatically.
- Look at how it ends. A crime story does not end with a sign-up button or a form asking for your phone number.
- Look for the platform’s name in the regulator’s register, not on Google. We explain how in how to check whether a broker is regulated.
If you have already left your details, expect a call from an “adviser”. Do not give them access to your computer and follow the victim guide.
Limits of this investigation
- We only see the pages our contributors reached. There may be other stories in other countries.
- Automatic reading of the screenshots can fail on some texts. We checked every case in the table by hand.
- Not finding an event in the press does not by itself prove it is fake. In these cases it is, because the page itself changes the date every day or because the text ends up selling a platform.