“One teaspoon is enough and you will lose 45 kilograms”.
That’s what Anthony Albanese supposedly promises will happen if you take a type of weight-loss supplement, according to advertisements running on Facebook.
Crikey has seen multiple examples of paid advertisements running on Meta’s advertising services that link to a variety of websites hosting a testimonial from Albanese.
While the Labor leader has been through a physical makeover in the lead-up to this year’s federal election, he attributes this body transformation to diet and exercise. So why is Albanese’s visage spruiking these supplements?
The advertised testimonials appear to be a fabrication linking to a company selling supplements, one that’s been accused of scamming people. The advertisements are run through new, small Facebook pages that are barebones but for the advertisement, registered with names like “Wealth” and “Personal variety”.
The posts feature bizarre, low-quality collages of Albanese with strange liquids alongside logos like the Department of Health and My Health Record.
These advertisements all link to similarly formatted websites, despite each being hosted on different domains. None of these websites has a name or organisation listed as part of its registration records, although at least two claim to be registered from Iceland.
The website is meant to resemble Albanese’s official Facebook page, complete with comment section, but is actually a third-party website. The page has several thousand words, supposedly from Albanese. It starts off vaguely consistent with the member for Grayndler’s story: “My name is Anthony Albanese and I am the Leader of the Australian Labor Party. I weighed 115 kg. That’s 40 kg more than the ideal weight for someone my height!”
The text soon goes off the rails, referring to Albanese’s non-existent wife (“we argued all the time, and she cursed me by saying terrible things, like calling me ‘big trash’, ‘loser’ and saying ‘you will never be satisfied with me'”.)
The testimonial builds to a glowing recommendation for KETO Complete and links to its website. The supplement’s website claims it was voted as the top weight-loss product in Australia and appeared on ABC, Sky News, nine.com.au and news.com.au — but those websites feature no mention of the product.
In fact, there are scant details about the company behind the product. Web searches for the product reveal fake news articles for fake news companies spruiking the products.
Reviews for the product on legitimate product review platforms, such as ProductReview and Trustpilot, repeatedly claim that they were overcharged, never received their items, or tricked into purchasing something they thought was a free sample. Crikey has not been able to independently confirm these reviews. Crikey’s investigation into the product’s website also revealed exposed customer details including full names and postal addresses.
Albanese’s fake endorsement is an example of a common trend on Facebook where scammers use a recognisable celebrity to promote their product.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched legal proceedings against Meta, alleging it engages in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by having scam advertisements from figures such as Dick Smith, Sunrise’s David Koch or NSW former premier Mike Baird. Similarly, well-known US talk show host Katie Couric has recently become a target for falsely promoting cannabidiol (CBD) gummies.
A spokesperson for Meta said that the company had removed the ads and the pages for breaching their policies on impersonating others to scam users.
What these figures have in common is their status as a household name and a news hook that’s related to the product. In the case of Albanese, his well-publicised weight loss served as the latest prompt for scammers using the world’s most popular social network to swindle its users.
