Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis has issued a warning over the flood of scam ads using his name and even claiming he’s been arrested.
Posting to his Twitter account, Martin issued a plea to his millions of followers to report any scam ads – and urged social media platforms to ‘pull their bloody fingers out and sort it’. Several fake AI videos circulating mainly on ‘X’ appear to show Martin being dragged away by police officers, while others try to mimic trusted news sites like the BBC.
Martin posted on Twitter (now X): “Lots of scam ads using “martin lewis arrested” to try and draw people in to their criminal schemes again. “If you see them please report them as scams to the platform (let’s hope the platforms pull their bloody fingers out and sort it).”
One follower, @grahamhorsley, then replied with a tweet showing an account which had an AI video of Martin being led away by police with the words ‘almost choked during breakfast’ in the post. Martin replied to thank the man for having reported it.
@gamolian01 added: “Having reported everyone of those style of adverts, it looks like they take down the name quickly, but 3 more accounts spring up with the same picture and misleading headline. To be so persistent, so quick to replace ads,they must make a fortune out of the scams they run!!!!!”
Back in 2024, Martin told his followers how the top 20 most popular celebrities for scam ads include singers like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran as well as popular presenter Jeremy Clarkson and Hollywood stars like Johnny Depp or Keanu Reeves.
Talking on his The Martin Lewis Podcast at the time, Martin said: “Many people think of scams as a light term but we should think about it like organised crime. It’s organised crime to try and steal money off people using suspicious devious psychologically adept forms of marketing to try and grab people’s money.
“So don’t assume that these criminal scammers are just randomly pumping out ads. In fact it’s almost certain that they have their own in-house dark web digital marketing teams who research which celebrities and advert types get the best click-through rates and then hone in again once they’ve got that data on which of them are most likely to attract people who will then be vulnerable enough to give them money and will make the mistake of giving them money.”
Martin Lewis then warned not to trust his face on ads especially, adding: “One in three scams involve me. I never wanted to get into being a campaigner on scams. My whole thing is about showing people how to save money not preventing them losing money, but when you’re in a third of the adverts out there, the worst bloody compliment I’ve ever received, you have to start campaigning on it.
“The great frustration for me is if there’s an advert with me in it, it’s always a scam because I don’t do ads.
“I successfully sued Facebook for £3M… but online advertising is still a wild west.”