Be aware of this investment scam video fabricated with visuals of multiple celebrities.
Claim
Rating
Explanation
A video claiming to show a woman as Laila Rao, an investment advisor to the Indian government is widely circulated. One of the videos says, “Hi, I am Laila Rao I am an investment advisor to the government of India. With the support of Ratan Tata, specially for all women in India I have created an investment project in which everyone earns guaranteed from Rs.2,00,000 per month, provide yourself and your family a stable income. Go to my Telegram channel and write to me”. This video shows Ratan Tata’s image also.
Jaggi Vadudev, founder of Isha Foundation is seen talking about the importance of investing in a video where he is seen endorsing Laila Rao and asking people interested in investing to text Laila in Telegram.
What is the truth?
When watching the video closely, we found ‘skin awareness month’ hoarding behind the woman. The viral video is related to the investment plan and moreover, the audio appears to not synchronise with the video. We also found the original video clips used in this viral video which revealed that the video is fabricated.
The woman seen in the video is not Laila Rao but a media personality Smriti Khanna. Two of her videos including the one related to ‘Skin Awareness Month’ and another one, a paid partnership video are clipped, added audio to it and fabricated as investment plan video.
We also searched to find if there is a person named Laila Rao as the Indian government’s investment advisor, but we found none. Instead, we found multiple complaints (check here, here and here) filed by the consumers on the ‘Consumers complaint court’ website against the ‘Laila Rao investment plan’. This proved that the video is a scam.
All these complaints on this website mentioned that they have paid to different individual accounts on ‘NSDL payments bank’ with the same IFSC code ‘NSPB0000002’ which belongs to the Lower Parel branch of NSDL payments bank.
The fabricated video claimed to show a government investment advisor luring people to send them money. The conversation was built through the Telegram channel. The victims were asked to send the money in the name of ‘sports betting’.
Conclusion
It is found that multiple clips of actress Smriti Khanna are merged and fabricated with fake audio to promote the scam. In addition to it, known personalities photos or videos are included in it to attract more people.
