IN SHORT: Kenyan actor Lucy Maina’s stage name “Becky” continues to be a favourite of scammers trying to defraud her fans. We expose four Facebook accounts misusing the name to run bogus promotions.
The Facebook accounts Becky Citizen Gift, Actress Becky Ctzn KE, Becky Citizen Gifts and Becky Becky are running promotions on Facebook groups and offering thousands of Kenyan shillings in prize money.
Each uses the stage name and photos of Kenyan actor Lucy Maina, who plays the lead character in the TV drama series Becky. The show airs on Citizen TV, the country’s most-watched station.
In the promotions, Kenyans are asked to respond to simple questions for a chance to win as much as KSh150,000 (US$974) in cash.
The topics covered in their posts are wide ranging, from asking users to name English words that start with certain letters to mentioning their favourite local actors. Others simply tell users whose names start with particular letters that they have received God's blessings and further engage them in the comment section.
The questions and tasks generally require little effort.
The accounts have posted on different dates here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
But are the accounts and the offers to be trusted? We checked.
Imposter accounts
There is little activity on each of the accounts’ timelines, save for constantly changing profile pictures of Maina. The absence of similar promotions on the accounts' timelines suggests they were likely created to run fake promotions on Facebook groups.
The poor writing in the posts, including misspellings and odd punctuation, is a sign that they are all scams.
While each of the accounts claim the promotions are from Kenyan Citizen TV, we found no such promotions on the station’s verified Facebook page. We also checked the actor’s official Instagram account Lucy Maina and found no promotions offering money.
The accounts want users to engage privately on WhatsApp but this is likely an attempt to scam them. They are all fake and their offers are bogus.
Africa Check has exposed similar scams in Maina’s name here, here and here.
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