Australian financial educator Scott Pape pretends to "join the game" to fight crypto scammers who stole his image

Australian financial educator Scott Pape, aka "Barefoot Investor," has spoken out about how he fought against cryptocurrency scammers who were using his identity to defraud his followers. Pape said he and his team had been reporting hundreds of fake Facebook groups that were imitating his image and trying to trick people into participating in scams. Rather than wait for Facebook to remove the groups, which could have caused a surge in scam activity in the meantime, Pape decided to engage with the scammers and detail their process. He added that further research showed that many U.S. regulators and financial watchdogs had warned about fake "wealth institutes" that promised to offer cryptocurrency trading courses via WhatsApp. In this type of scam, a "professor" provides fake trading signals for gang members to invest their money in, while an assistant communicates with investors. Once enough money is raised, the gang disappears with all the funds, changes its name, and targets new victims.