Image thieves: “People started putting money in there”

A network of fraudsters with international connections is responsible for the distribution of ads highlighting Quebec celebrities who unknowingly find themselves promoting fake pills.

• Read more: International network of fraudsters behind fake diet pills

• Read more: His image was used by scammers: “Their product is stupid!” – Claude Legault

• Read more: JE: Who stole the picture of Gino Sounard and Ave-Marie Lordi?

Artists like Claude Legault and public figures like Gino Chouinard and Ève-Marie Lortie have had their images stolen without their permission to promote products like weight loss or erectile dysfunction pills.

Marie-Claude Barrett was also a victim of this scam. The scammers used an interview given by a host on Radio Canada’s “Tout le Monde en Parle” program to promote their products.

During a segment of the program that was not aired due to “technical difficulties”, Marie-Claude Barrett announced how she became rich.

“I would have been told that I have the ability to spot a flaw in a system and you can get rich now with cryptocurrency, and I would have become aggressive because no one believed me on the set,” she explains.

Apparently, the host notes that this never happened.

However, the damage has already been done, as several internet users wrote to Marie-Claude Barrett asking for advice on cryptocurrency investments.

“On my public Facebook page, I put a warning, but within weeks there was a second wave,” says Marie-Claude Barrett. “What worries me is that people are starting to put money into it.”

A user wrote to the host to say he had invested US$500 and asked if he would advise him to invest up to US$5,000 in a scam company that used Marie-Claude Barrett’s image.

“Then I started to panic,” says Marie-Claude Barrett. “There was even one woman who was adamant with me that she didn’t believe me when I told her it was a scam, and she thought she wanted to keep “my way of making money” a secret.”

These deceptive ads lead to all kinds of transactional websites. These advertisements were not benign and were planned by a structured company operating internationally, JE revealed during the investigation.

Watch the full interview above…