Beware of Scam Video Campaign Exploiting Generous Donors to Help Sick Children

Investigators have identified a video campaign from an organization that claims to be raising money for sick children who is actually they are scam sites.

Los cybercriminals they have a gift for manipulation, deliberately exploiting character traits and emotions such as fear, trust, respect for authority, and often the desire to help others. The researchers of a cybersecurity brand have identified a new scam video campaign of a criminal organization that carries out crowdfunding under the pretext of helping sick children. The result, they are tens of thousands of euros from generous donors cheated.

In the latest round of video ad scams detected and YouTube e Instagrama child is shown supposedly cancer patient begging for treatment help. The videos, which have different versions, are in Russian, but have subtitles in English, French, Spanish and Ukrainian, and tell the story of a boy named “Semion”.

Semion says his family can’t afford his cancer treatment, and if he doesn’t get it in the next two weeks, it will be too late to save him.

The video links to a fundraising page for donations that offers multiple methods to donate: direct bank transfer or through an online payment in increments of up to 10,000 euros in categories with their own names that also strike a chord.

The organizers of the fundraising page claim to belong to World Champions EU and be linked to an Israeli organization called World Champions. Investigators have tried to contact World Champions directly, however, they received no response.

In 2022the researchers found a similar campaignmost likely from the same group with see an Israelin which the videos were Viewed millions of times and people donated over $650,000.

Until July of this year, donations to the new scam exceeded 181,000 euros And the numbers were increasing every day. the researchers They reported the channel to YouTubeand urge people not to give and be careful when showing ads for these types of crowdfunding campaigns on social media.

“As cybersecurity researchers, we constantly see how criminals they exploit human nature to make money. One of the most heartbreaking examples, however, is when people take advantage of the human desire to help others, especially when it comes to exploiting sick children,” he said. Luis Corrons, security specialist and researcher at Avast. “Our work consists not only in watch out for these scams and developing products and services that help protect people against them, but also in educating people about what is spreading on the Internet. When it comes to donating, it is important to verify the authenticity of the organization before transferring money to make sure it is helping who you think it is. To be more sure, directly visit the official websites from trusted organizations to donate instead of responding to requests for donations through emails, videos, or social media ads.”