An ITV Tonight programme has revealed that fans of Emmerdale and Coronation Street are being scammed out of money through fake celebrity accounts.
In the show, Celebrity Scams: Are You At Risk?, TV presenter and meteorologist Alex Beresford investigates how people use social media accounts to trick fans into parting with their cash.
Coronation Street’s Dan Brocklebank, who plays Billy Mayhew on the soap, said: “It’s happened so many times, people set up what they call my personal account or my official account and start to message people, and they’re being conned out of thousands of pounds.”
One of the celebrities most commonly used by fraudsters, according to Tonight, is MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis, who said: “My whole work and mission and everything that I try and do is to help consumers to improve their finances, and prevent financial injustice.
“To have that perverted and used by criminals to take advantage of my reputation is horrendous.”
Also on the programme, Emmerdale star Lisa Riley (Mandy Dingle) speaks about the fraudsters who have used pictures of her to sell slimming aids.
“They say you will lose 15kg in three weeks, and the amount of people that have bought slimming aids with my face linked to it is off the scale”, she said.
On the show an anonymous woman, referred to as Kirsty, reveals that her mother fell victim to romance scams impersonating Emmerdale actors.
In 2023 her mother thought she had been contacted by Tony Audenshaw, who plays Bob Hope.
Kirsty said: “I drove round to her house and there were some suitcases in the hallway, she told me that she’d fallen in love with somebody, he’s on Emmerdale.
“I immediately got suspicious, she said, ‘He’s my soul mate, I know him really well’.”
Speaking about how they then drained her finances, she said: “It was £100 to £200 at a time. By December, it was £300 a day.
Tomorrow Evening on ITV... Alex Beresford - whose identity has been used by scammers - investigates how criminals are using famous faces to deceive the public and how to protect ourselves.
— Tonight (@ITVTonight) March 12, 2025
ℹ️ Celebrity Scams: Are You At Risk?
📆Tomorrow Night on ITV1
⏰8:30pm pic.twitter.com/btLBLdLnXq
“I asked, ‘how much have you sent?’. She said, ‘I think about £15,000’. I just gave her a big hug and said, ‘it’s not true, you’ve been scammed’.”
History then repeated itself when her mother thought she had been in contact with Jeff Hordley, who plays Cain Dingle on the ITV show.
“I noticed that she’d spent about £2,000 in a three-day period”, Kirsty said.
“I phoned her and the first thing she said was, ‘it’s not a scam, he sent me videos of himself this time’.”
The fraudsters had manipulated a video of Hordley using AI technology, according to Tonight.
Kirsty added: “Mum felt really humiliated, she’s grieving really, it’s the loss of not just money, it’s, it’s the loss of what she thought was a relationship as well.”
Tonight said it looked into fake profiles online and found seven fake Audenshaw accounts and more than 90 fake Hordley profiles on Facebook.
Celebrity Scams: Are You At Risk? – Tonight airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 8.30pm on Thursday March 13.
