Adverts for keto diet pills falsely imply they’re endorsed by Mumset, Dragons’ Den and TV presenter Holly Willoughby to deceive shoppers, Which? reports.
Malicious investment and cryptocurrency adverts will often pretend to be backed by famous faces to lure you in, but promotions for health products such as diet pills are equally plagued by bogus endorsement.
We found a messy trail of dodgy adverts for keto diet pills making misleading claims all over the internet, posted via search engines, online news outlets and various social media platforms.
Fake celebrity endorsement
In October 2019, we reported that a rogue Facebook advertiser called [ketopurediet.com] had pretended to be backed by celebrity Anne Hegerty from ITV game show The Chase. Shoppers reported that the company took additional card payments without permission and then refused refunds. Shortly afterwards, the website disappeared entirely.
We’ve now found similar deceptive adverts appear all over the internet.
A Facebook page for @ketoburndxdragonsdenuk, created on 12 February 2022 and shown below, falsely claims to be connected to the BBC TV show ‘Dragons’ Den’. This page initially linked to a website called [store.ketoburndx.com] but has recently switched to promoting a website called [ketolife.fit].Image of Facebook page for Keto Burn DX
BBC Studios told Which? ‘there is no link between Dragons’ Den and this advertiser’.
When we searched for other promotions for ‘Keto Burn DX’ we found multiple news outlets hosting promotions for similar products.
One example is an advert published at 09.05 on 21 February 2022 on The Jerusalem Post, entitled ‘Holly Willoughby Keto UK (United Kingdom) – Is Keto Burn DX Boots Holly Willoughby Scam Or Legit?’.Advert selling keto diet pills
The content repeatedly invited readers to buy ‘Holly Willoughby Keto’ – yet the agent for Holly Willoughby told Which?: ‘I can confirm that Holly has no connection to Keto Burn DX and has never endorsed diet pills or keto products of any kind.’
This promotion originally included links to [store.ketoburndx.com] but by 29 March 2022, the links had switched to a website for ‘Keto Extreme’ [discount2.ketoextremefatburner.com].