Investigation: the news outlets investment scams copy most, by country
In this article
In short: we reviewed 421 screenshots one by one of the pages that celebrity investment ads lead to, taken between 2 and 6 November 2026 in 25 countries. 163 (39%) imitate a real news outlet or a government website: they copy its logo, its masthead and its menu. We found 40 different outlets and agencies in 20 countries. Each country gets its own reference outlet: El Tiempo in Colombia, Rai News in Italy, Blick in Switzerland or Index in Hungary.
What we did
Our contributors click on investment ads that use celebrities and save a screenshot of the landing page. We looked at the top of each screenshot and noted which outlet or agency it imitated. We only counted a case when the outlet’s logo or masthead was visible, not when the text merely mentioned it.
The screenshots crop out the browser bar and sometimes part of the masthead. That is why these figures are a minimum: some pages we counted as “no identifiable outlet” probably copied one too.
The most copied outlets
| Outlet or agency imitated | Country | Screenshots |
|---|---|---|
| El Tiempo | Colombia | 25 |
| Rai News | Italy | 24 |
| Blick | Switzerland | 11 |
| Index | Hungary | 9 |
| Italian Government website (Presidenza del Consiglio) | Italy | 8 |
| Hürriyet | Turkey | 8 |
| La Nación | Argentina | 7 |
| la Repubblica | Italy | 6 |
| Público | Portugal | 5 |
| Expresso | Portugal | 4 |
| Le Soir | Belgium | 4 |
| SRF | Switzerland | 4 |
| GhanaWeb | Ghana | 4 |
| infobae | Argentina and Colombia | 4 |
Others appear in fewer cases: Al Bayan (United Arab Emirates), CNN en Español, TN and Clarín (Argentina), HLN (Belgium), ECO (Portugal), tagesschau and Bild (Germany), BBC (United Kingdom), RTS and NZZ (Switzerland), El Mundo (Spain), Corriere della Sera and TG La7 (Italy), BFM Business, TF1 Info and franceinfo (France), Skai (Greece), Sponichi Annex (Japan), ARISE News and Punch (Nigeria), Aftonbladet (Sweden), Yahoo News (Singapore) and the website of the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Finance.
These outlets are victims. They have nothing to do with the ads: someone copies their design to make the scam look like news.
In some countries almost always, in others almost never
The percentage varies a lot from country to country:
| Country | Screenshots reviewed | Imitate an outlet or agency |
|---|---|---|
| Colombia | 31 | 87% |
| Hungary | 11 | 82% |
| Turkey | 10 | 80% |
| Italy | 60 | 68% |
| Belgium | 11 | 64% |
| Portugal | 20 | 60% |
| Switzerland | 41 | 44% |
| Argentina | 46 | 33% |
| France | 30 | 10% |
| Spain | 36 | 6% |
| Greece | 21 | 5% |
In Colombia, Hungary or Turkey, the “news story” almost always carries the masthead of a well-known newspaper. In Spain, France or Greece, the pages usually have their own newspaper-style design with an invented name, or they imitate a TV show without copying the channel’s logo. The message is the same: it looks like the press, but it is not.
Why they copy a newspaper
An investment ad raises suspicion. A news story, less so. By copying the design of a well-known outlet, the scam borrows its credibility:
- The celebrity seems to have been interviewed by real journalists, not hired for an ad.
- The platform seems a current news topic, with today’s date and reader comments.
- Sometimes the “story” reports an invented event: a shooting, an arrest or an interview cut off live on air. We explain it in the “attacked” celebrity, the scam hook.
In Italy, eight pages also imitated the website of the Prime Minister’s Office, with the official emblem and menu. It is the same idea taken further: it does not look like a news story, it looks like an official programme. We cover more cases of agencies being used in how scams use regulators.
How to tell the copy from the real newspaper
- Check the address. El Tiempo is at eltiempo.com and Rai News at rainews.it. The copy lives on another domain, often unrelated to the outlet (in Spain we found a laSexta page at lasextanews[.]com). We cover this in what the links in ads give away.
- Click the menu. On the copy, the sections lead nowhere or all lead to the form.
- Look for the story on the outlet’s real website. If it is not there, it is fake.
- Look at how it ends. A newspaper does not put a form for your phone number at the end of an interview.
- Be suspicious if the celebrity “reveals their secret” to making money. No outlet publishes that as news.
If you have already left your details, read what happens after you leave your phone number and follow the victim guide.
Limits of this investigation
- These are screenshots from five days and from the countries where we have contributors. In Canada, Indonesia or India we did not identify any outlet, but we reviewed few pages.
- We classified the screenshots by hand, from the top of the page. When the logo was not visible, we counted the page as “no identifiable outlet”.
- The same ad can appear several times if several contributors saw it. The figures count screenshots, not distinct ads.