No shortcuts to becoming rich: Viral reports about Adani promoting Cryptocurrency are fake
The screenshot of the Business Standard was morphed, and the report with the masthead of The Indian Express is fake.
By Md Mahfooz Alam Published on 14 July 2023 6:06 AM GMT
(Screengrab from Facebook post)
A Facebook user shared a screenshot purportedly of Bussines Standard, which claims that billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani is investing Rs 892 million in a new platform to make ordinary people rich.
(Courtesy: Facebook)
Click here to access the archive of the post.
The post also carries a link to a report purportedly by The Indian Express. As per the report, Adani has announced on the show “Good Morning India” hosted by journalist Sonal Mehrotra Kapoor that he has found a new “wealth loophole”. This loophole will help transform anyone into a millionaire within 3-4 months.”
It also quoted Billionaire as saying, “What's made me successful is jumping into new opportunities quickly - without any hesitation. And right now, my number one money-maker is a new cryptocurrency auto-trading program called Ethereum Code. It's the single biggest opportunity I've seen in my entire lifetime to build a small fortune fast. I urge everyone to check this out before the banks shut it down.”
Click here to access the archive of the post.
Fact Check
NewsMeter investigation found that the screenshot of the Business Standard was morphed, and the report with the masthead of The Indian Express is fake.
We ran a relevant keyword search but could not find any reports by Business Standard, which said that Adani is investing Rs 892 million in a new platform that can make ordinary people rich.
We also noticed no space between “make” and “ordinary” in the title, which confirms that the screenshot has been poorly morphed.
(Courtesy: Facebook)
We found discrepancies in the webpage of the purported article of The Indian Express. The “Express” in the masthead is misspelt as “Expres”. In both digital and print versions, the newspaper uses the logo only on the left side. However, on this webpage, we found the masthead flanked by the newspaper logo on both sides.
We also noticed that the URL of the news report is “clrygdnwd.digital”, which is different from the official Indian Express website. The official URL is https://indianexpress.com, which confirms that the website is dubious.
(Courtesy: Website impersonating The Indian Express)
Further, we checked that the website’s domain was registered with the name ‘rsnmdfgh5l.digital’ on May 12, 2022, with Registrar’s name mentioned as ‘NameSilo, LLC’. It confirms that the webpage is not associated with The Indian Express. We also could not find any such report published by The Indian Express.
(Courtesy: Whois)
Finally, we searched for Adani’s interview with Kapoor on the “wealth loophole”, “new platforms,” and “cryptocurrency”, but it did not fetch any results.
Similarly, we fact-checked a similar claim in April this year about Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani investing $892 million in a new trading platform to make ordinary people richer.
The Indian Express, in a tweet on September 4, 2021, had debunked a similar claim reported by a dubious website with the newspaper masthead about Azim Premji urging people to invest in Bitcoin.
Hence, we conclude same fake claims about billionaire industrialists investing in cryptocurrency are regularly published by phishing websites to fool people.
