'I lost £76,000 after falling for a fake Martin Lewis advert'

A man said he lost £76,000 after falling for a scam that used a deep fake of Martin Lewis.

Des Healey, a kitchen fitter from Brighton, handed over £76,000 to what he thought was a bitcoin investment scheme, but actually turned out to be made up.

He had come across the advert on Facebook in 2023, which used artificial intelligence (AI) to make it look like finance journalist Martin Lewis was endorsing Elon Musk's bitcoin scheme, the Mirror reports.

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Des appeared on Good Morning Britain today and spoke to Susanna Reid and Ed Balls about his experience. He bravely shared his story and explained how he didn't realise it was a fake video of Martin Lewis.

He said: "If you listen to the voice and look how the mouth moves, that normally gives it away. But at the time, obviously I wasn't studying that. I just got Martin Lewis saying that normally he doesn't cover these [investments] but this time, this is such a good thing.

"Now I feel how stupid I was, how blind I was. You know, I'm normally the type of person that would tell other people that doesn't sound right, but these people...

"Someone once described it as being under their spell, and I think that was probably the best term that he could have possibly said. I knew, in a way, something wasn't right, but I hoped that it was okay."

Des originally told his story to the BBC and explained how he originally replied to the advert as he wanted to "earn a few extra bob" before Christmas.

The scammer set up a bank account for Des with Revolut and took a £1,000 investment, but then the scammers pressured him into sending more money, under the fake promise of seeing a return on his investment.

Des ultimately ended up taking out four loans with four different companies totalling £70,000. He managed to get two of the loans cancelled but he still owes £20,000 plus interest of almost £6,000. He is currently in the process of speaking to the Financial Ombudsman.

Des's son Derren ultimately stopped him and threatened to call the police. Derren said: "It was like seeing someone you know in a toxic relationship, as an outsider.

"You can't understand how they can't see what you're seeing. So that was like our dispute, and then eventually we was just having a conversation... and I think the penny just dropped."

Martin Lewis told Good Morning Britain: "It doesn't just impact people's finances and their financial futures. It impacts the entire way you feel about yourself when you've been scammed. And we are just not good enough we allow this epidemic of scams in the UK to continue.

"All I can really suggest to people is you be aware that it's not regulated. It's a wild west, and therefore you have to protect yourself."

A spokesperson from Meta told Good Morning Britain: "We don't allow fraudulent activity and work closely with law enforcement to support investigations and keep scammers off our platforms."

A spokesperson for Revolut said it was sorry to hear about what had happened to Des, and told the BBC: "Revolut works hard and invests heavily to protect our customers as best we can through our fraud prevention technologies, analysing over half a billion transactions a month."