What was claimed
A BBC article describes how Martin Lewis has endorsed a “new cryptocurrency auto-trading program called BitProfit”.
Our verdict
The page in question is not a BBC article, and he has not endorsed such a program.
Martin Lewis has not endorsed a cryptocurrency platform in a BBC interview
A link being shared on Facebook has the headline “SPECIAL REPORT: Martin Lewis’s Latest Investment Has Experts in Awe And Big Banks Terrified”.
The page, which appears to impersonate a BBC News article, goes on to say that consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis, who founded Money Saving Expert, has endorsed a “new cryptocurrency investment platform” that allows him to make “tens of thousands of pounds a day on autopilot”.
Representatives for Martin Lewis confirmed to Full Fact that he had not endorsed such a platform. He has never tweeted about it and no reference to it appears on the Money Saving Expert website.
The page appears to mimic the BBC news site, with a BBC logo at the top and various references to BBC News implying the article was written by the outlet. It was not.
The URL starts with “ktrzlbotcih.digital”, not “bbc.co.uk/news”, and the article looks very different to one you might find on the BBC News website. Nor could we find any trace of this article being published by the BBC.
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Martin Lewis’ likeness has been used in this way before
In 2018 Martin Lewis took Facebook to court over adverts using his name or picture without permission, sometimes to promote scams or cryptocurrency.
In 2019, he dropped the case after Facebook agreed to donate £3 million to Citizens Advice for an anti-scams project, pay Mr Lewis’ legal fees and launch a scam ads reporting tool.
Image courtesy of Kanchanara
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Martin Lewis did not endorse a cryptocurrency platform as the article claims.