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| - Scammers exploit high-stakes Greenlandic election campaign
Shortly before the Greenlandic election, fake articles about top Greenlandic politicians appear on Facebook.
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Although the purpose of the articles is to scam people out of money, they resemble influence attacks, says an expert.
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Note: The article below is an English version of this originally Danish fact-check article
Greenlandic voters may have come across multiple fake Facebook posts about Greenlandic top politicians over the past month.
For instance, fake posts claim that The Bank of Greenland has sued both Premier Múte B. Egede from the IA party and Naleraq member of Inatsisartut, Kuno Fencker. Other posts allege that the same politicians have been arrested by the police following statements made in interviews.
However, the fake posts are not part of Russian or American interference in the Greenlandic election, which experts and authorities have expressed concerns about.
Instead, in the middle of a high-stakes Greenlandic election campaign, politicians are being targeted on Facebook as part of an investment scam.
In fake articles circulated through Facebook ads, it is claimed that Greenlandic politicians have been sued by The Bank of Greenland. The articles are part of an investment scam, according to TjekDet's research (Photo: Screenshots).
The fake stories about Kuno Fencker and Múte B. Egede have been spread through Facebook ads designed to lure users into clicking on the articles. In the case of the Greenlandic politicians, the scammers have also exploited the media outlet Arctic Today and the Arctic Hub platform.
Clicking on these fake articles leads to a fabricated interview where the two politicians supposedly explain how investing a small amount of money can make you rich.
The fake articles are identical to celebrity scams that have exploded on Facebook in Denmark in recent years. Well-known figures like Divya Das, Anders Lund Madsen, and Preben Elkjær have been misused to lure money from hopeful Facebook users.
Slandering politicians
Back in January, Greenland's public service media KNR was the victim of a similar hoax. A Facebook ad falsely claimed that tech billionaire Elon Musk was offering subsidies to Greenlandic citizens to help them "achieve financial prosperity and improve their quality of life."
The sender was not KNR, says Signe Ravn-Højgaard, director of the think tank Digital Infrastructure, who has researched social media in Greenland. She highlighted in a LinkedIn post that the fake ad was circulating on Facebook.
“I was later contacted by Meta, who said that this was a case of financial fraud. However, the ad about Elon Musk clearly fits into a political agenda that could be used for disinformation,” she says.
Back in January, scam ads targeting Greenlandic users also surfaced. Elon Musk was used as a lure to get users to invest in fake investment platforms (Photo: Screenshot from Facebook).
She has since made a post documenting the fake articles and ads about Múte B. Egede and Kuno Fencker. Even though they are not direct influence campaigns intended to sabotage the election in Greenland, they should be taken seriously.
“There is no doubt that these ads are misinformation. And therefore, they are problematic regardless of the intent behind them,” says Signe Ravn-Højgaard.
TjekDet has continuously covered emerging forms of digital fraud - including investment scams where fraudsters use celebrities in Facebook ads to lure victims into fake investment platforms and spoofing scams, where scammers use technology to call victims from numbers belonging to banks or public authorities, deceiving them into handing over money under the pretense of protecting them from fraud.
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