Is That Celebrity Investment Video Real? How to Check Before You Pay

A man in a white T-shirt films himself on the driveway of a villa, with palm trees behind him and a white supercar parked at his shoulder. He tells the camera he was stuck in a nine-to-five job two years ago and that the market now pays for everything around him. He offers to show viewers the platform he uses, and points to a link below where they can start with 200.

We generated the clip for this article from a short text description. The man, the house and the car are not real. Put a well-known face in his place, or a familiar TV presenter behind a studio desk, and the result would look much like the adverts police in the UK have been warning about.

How a video cost one person £250,000

Police in Northern Ireland urged people to be careful online earlier this month, after a resident of Ards and North Down lost £250,000. The fraud began with what appeared to be an AI-generated video of a well-known figure from the finance world, promoting an investment with big returns, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said.

After a small first deposit, the victim was contacted on WhatsApp and pressed to pay more, police said. The fraudsters talked the victim into opening several online accounts, gained remote access to the victim's computer and encouraged the victim to borrow money to keep investing. The victim was then told that more fees had to be paid before any of the money could be released.

The advert only had to make the first small deposit look safe, and the large payments followed in private messages, away from the platform where it ran.

Start with what the video asks you to do

Before you look closely at the picture, look at the offer. A celebrity, or someone presented as wealthy, recommending a platform that will grow your savings is a warning sign on its own.

In Britain, the face that appears most often in these adverts belongs to the consumer journalist Martin Lewis. In February, Surrey's police commissioner described him as the high-profile figure fraudsters impersonate most often. Lewis does not appear in adverts at all, according to his website, MoneySavingExpert.

If a video sends you to a link, asks for a small starter deposit or moves the conversation to WhatsApp, you do not need a detector to decide. That is reason enough to stop.

Two kinds of fake

Scam videos are made in two different ways, and they go wrong in different places.

Generated from scratch. The man in the driveway is an example. His face, his voice, the villa and the car all came from a model, and nothing in the frame was ever filmed. Clips like this cost almost nothing to make and need no real person. They are also what detectors handle best. Our checker marked this one as AI-generated with high confidence within seconds.

Built on a real person. The second kind starts from genuine footage of someone viewers already trust, often an interview or a television appearance. The face is swapped, or the mouth is re-animated to say new words, and a cloned voice is laid over it. Because the room, the lighting and the person's movements are real, this kind is much harder for any detector to catch, ours included. Its mistakes usually sit in the voice, the mouth and the edges of the face, and you can check those yourself.

How to check a video yourself

Listen to the voice. A fake often slips in the sound before it slips in the picture. Cloned voices tend to sound flat, with no breaths and a pace that does not change from one sentence to the next. Fully generated voices often have the opposite problem and sound too clean for the room they are meant to be in. We described that in more detail in how to spot a Veo 3 video.

Watch the mouth. On sounds that close the lips, such as p, b and m, a re-animated mouth often stays slightly open, or the teeth blur together.

Check the edges. Look at where the face meets the hair, the collar and the background, especially when the head turns.

Look for the original. Search the person's own channels for the clip. A genuine recommendation would appear there. A scam advert usually exists nowhere except in the advert.

If you use a detector, including ours, treat a high score as a strong signal. A low score on a video of a real person talking means the result is uncertain, not that the video is genuine. When you can, upload the original file rather than a link, because every re-upload to a platform strips out detail the detector relies on.

If you have already paid

• Call your bank straight away, using the number on your card or in the bank's official app, not one given to you by anyone who contacted you. With transfers, time matters.
• Report it to the police or to your country's official fraud reporting service. Keep the advert, the messages and the payment details: they are what an investigation starts from.
• Do not pay any "release" or "withdrawal" fee. It is the last stage of the same scam.
• Be wary of anyone who offers to recover your money for a fee. Such offers often come from the same people.

For more warning signs, see how to spot AI-generated video.