Activision Games engineer flags new potential Monzo AI gambling scam

A new AI-generated scam has surfaced on TikTok, with fraudsters posing as the London-based online banking giant Monzo claiming that users can win big on “Monzo Slots.”

Key takeaways:

Scammers seem to be spreading an AI-generated TikTok ad impersonating British bank Monzo to promote “Monzo Slots.”
Monzo has said that the ad is fake and not affiliated with the bank, and reported that the issue is being investigated internally after users flagged it online.
Fraudsters are using alternative spellings of the popular banking brand to evade fraud and impersonation detection systems within TikTok.

Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.

“Hey, Monzo, I assume you are aware of an AI advert doing the rounds promoting a "Monzo Slots" app/scam?”

Eddie Stubbington, a senior release engineer for Activision, posted a screenshot of the supposed AI-generated scam, which shows two attractive people holding credit cards by an ATM.

The cards and the ATM both use Monzo’s logo to promote gambling services.

The screenshot, taken from TikTok, shows two people holding blue “Monzo” cards with the caption saying that users can play “quickly, conveniently, and securely” using “M0nz0 sl0ts.”

Stubbington tagged Monzo directly, flagging the issue with the bank's online team.

Monzo responded, confirming that the “ad wasn’t created by us, nor is it affiliated with Monzo in any way.”

The scam has been escalated to “the relevant teams,” and Monzo assured the original poster that the right people are “on the case.”

We reached out to Monzo and the bank had no further comment on the issue.

A few X users commented, claiming that they had also seen these fake Monzo Slot ads popping up on social media.

“The ads now appearing on TikTok, as ‘Wonzo' and spelling slots as ‘sl0ts’ to try to go undetected. All with Monzo branding, of course,” said one X user.

“Thought it was just me. Been seeing these everywhere on TikTok,” said another user.

It seems that scammers attempted to bypass TikTok’s fraud detection or impersonation systems by using zeros instead of o’s when writing Monzo Slots.

Cybernews reached out to the original poster to verify the scam, but didn’t receive a reply at the time of writing.

When checking for the scam on TikTok and other social media sites, the AI-generated ad wasn’t visible.

One user claimed that they “reported one on TikTok…which they removed.”

While the ad specifically targets Monzo, other banks and financial services have reportedly faced similar issues.

Why AI scam ads are becoming a huge problem

Roughly 2.5 million US adults meet the criteria for severe gambling addiction yearly, while around 5 to 8 million would be diagnosed with a mild to moderate gambling problem, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.

Despite this, gambling ads continue to proliferate online, promoting an addictive activity that is designed to keep you hooked.

However, scam ads using AI are becoming increasingly popular among fraudsters, as they democratize production, enabling the creation of fraudulent advertisements easily and quickly.

AI is also being used to create deepfakes of popular celebrities and public figures to promote scams.

British consumer rights activist Martin Lewis’s likeness was appropriated by scammers to peddle an investment scam which was supposedly run by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

It’s no coincidence that these two figures were used to promote this scam, as Lewis, the creator of the site Money Saving Expert, is successful in finance and has led various initiatives to help the average person save money, and Musk, due to his extreme wealth.

Through this, scammers are aiming to build trust around their fraudulent scheme with the hope that more people will take part in the scam.

With the help of AI, deepfake scams are becoming more convincing and are becoming more difficult to spot.