Police investigating fake profiles posing as government ministers

The police are investigating the appearance of a number of fake Facebook profiles purporting to be government ministers and other officials, with the intention of scamming unwitting Facebook users.

In recent months, several government ministers have uploaded posts warning their followers on Facebook about fake profiles set up using their name and profile picture, which are sending messages to Facebook users.

“The police have so far this year received 31 reports about unauthorised access to their social media accounts, all of which are being investigated,” the police’s cybercrime unit said in reply to questions by MaltaToday about the matter.

Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and former Equality Minister Helena Dalli, as well as a number of others have all experienced this form of identity theft.

The police said that investigations were still ongoing when asked whether the perpetrators had been identified.

This week, Facebook users also started seeing sponsored fake news stories appearing on their timelines featuring a number of local personalities including Corinthia boss Alfred Pisani.

Similar posts targeted the Maltese population back in January when sponsored posts attempting to lure people into “investing” in cryptocurrency schemes that were supposedly endorsed by the Prime Minister and other government ministers, started to appear on Facebook.

“Although one cannot identify the ultimate objective of such posts prior to the successful conclusion of investigations, it is most likely that the persons behind such fake profiles/pages are aiming for some form of pecuniary benefit,” the police had told MaltaToday back in January.

The government had reported the posts to the police, saying that in addition to having “fraudulent intentions”, the stories “cast a shadow by reporting untruthful facts”. It insisted that it would not be taking the matter lightly.

Industry sources said that both the fake sponsored posts and attempts to create fake profiles of well-known individuals were likely to be coming from the same source.

The method employed by scammers is to coax people into providing sensitive details about themselves by using influential figures, either endorsing the scheme or, in the case of fake profiles, directly soliciting the information under false pretences.

The police said they constantly send requests to service providers such as Facebook when investigating such reports, nothing that “such fraudulent opportunities originate from overseas, sometimes from countries outside the EU”.

“Furthermore, the Police also contributes on a regular basis to information regarding cross-border crime to Europol for analysis,” the police had said.