IN SHORT: Kenyan actor Lucy Maina’s stage name has been used often by imposters to run non-existent promotions. Here are multiple Facebook accounts that you should steer clear of.
The Facebook accounts Becky Cntz, Becky Citizen KE, Becky On Citizen, Becky Citizen KE, Becky Citizen and Becky foundation citizen are running promotions on Facebook and promising thousands of Kenyan shillings in prizes.
Each of the accounts use 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.
They seek to entice users with loan offers as well as simple questions that they promise can win people large amounts of money.
The accounts Becky Cntz and Becky foundation citizen have frequently posted the offers on their timelines.
The rest of the accounts post on different Facebook groups here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
But are any of these to be trusted? We checked.
Common scam in Kenya
We checked the posts and noted that the exact same phrases and questions have been used by imposter accounts numerous times before to scam users.
Each post uses the promise of a loan or simple questions to lure users into engaging with them. They then ask users to reach out privately to be awarded. Here, users will be asked for a “registration” or “unlocking” fee, which is a clear attempt to scam them. This is a common scam in Kenya.
We also noted that the posts are poorly written with randomly capitalised letters, odd punctuation, a casual mix of English and Kiswahili, and repetitions.
We checked the actor’s official Instagram account Lucy Maina and found no loan offers or promotions offering money.
The accounts in the actor’s stage name and their offers are fake.
Africa Check has exposed similar scams in Maina’s name here and here.
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