IN SHORT: Tanzanian actor Othman Njaidi is well known in the Kenyan entertainment industry. We expose three Facebook accounts using his name to run bogus promotions.
Three Facebook accounts Jabali Gifts, Junior J J Jabali and Jabali Junior Ke have been running what appear to be promotions on different Facebook groups.
“Jabali” is the stage name of Tanzanian actor Othman Njaidi, also known as Patrick Kanumba. He played the lead character, Jabali Junior, in Kenya’s popular TV drama series Sultana. Two of the accounts use his photos as their profile pictures.
The accounts post simple questions and encourage users to answer. The users are then told they’ve won and are asked to contact the accounts privately to claim their money.
The questions are almost similar and, for instance, ask users to name their favourite local actors, their county or even identify words starting with certain letters of the alphabet.
The posts appear 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.
Fake accounts, scam offers
The posts are poorly written and contain odd punctuation. This is usually a sign of an imposter account. Celebrities usually strive to communicate to their fans clearly and concisely.
Another red flag is the thousands of Kenyan shillings promised to users for answering questions that would require very little effort to answer. It would be odd to give many strangers on Facebook KSh45,000 (US$300) for simply naming their counties of residence or answering similarly easy questions.
Each of the accounts rarely post on their own timelines. Little to no activity on a Facebook account's timeline is usually another sign that it’s fake.
One of the accounts told us to pay an “unlocking” fee of KSh699 to receive KSh55,000. If you are asked to pay any kind of fee before you receive your winnings, this is a clear sign that a competition or promotion is run by a scammer.
We looked at Njaidi's Instagram account, which has over 300,000 followers, and found no offers like those on the suspicious Facebook accounts.
All signs point to fake Facebook accounts attempting to scam the actor’s fans.
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