Updated: June 8, 2026, 4:36 p.m. This article has been updated with a statement from Reddit.
The scammers are BBC, financial timesand guardianA new study by cybersecurity firm Bitdefender Labs says that this is being done to facilitate fraudulent AI-powered investment schemes.
The campaign, revealed by Bitdefender researchers Andrea Olariu and Emanuel Puscasu, promotes fictitious AI platforms such as Wencoin STX, Warrior Coin AI, and Nevo Coin. Promoted posts redirect users to clone news websites designed to closely mimic the appearance of legitimate publishers. There, fabricated articles, fabricated testimonials, and fake profit screenshots are used to build false credibility.
This isn’t the first time this tactic has been deployed on Reddit, but interest in AI investment opportunities is growing as Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX (which recently merged with xAI) prepare for IPOs.
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A Reddit spokesperson provided the following comment to Mashable:
“Maintaining the integrity of our platform is our top priority. Reddit’s advertising policies prohibit ads that: is deceptive, false, or misleading;. Our ad review team uses human review and advanced automated tools to identify and deny this type of advertising content from appearing on Reddit. We also encourage users to report potentially misleading ads through .Report an ad“We are constantly working to improve our tools and employ third-party vendors to verify the authenticity of ads on Reddit, ensuring that the claims made within products, services, and ads are verifiable.”
Some of the ads appeared in video format, and Bitdefender described them as deepfake BBC news segments featuring fake anchors delivering fabricated economic headlines. Some incorporated footage of politicians and references to international summits to give the content an air of geopolitical legitimacy.
The scam pages used classic high-pressure tactics, including countdown timers, claims that registration spots are limited, and conspiratorial narratives that suggest banks or governments are suppressing access to the platform. Users who submitted their contact details were told that a “personal advisor” would follow up with them within 24 hours.
Bitdefender warned that this campaign is structurally very similar to the Metabase investment fraud network it documented in March 2026, with threat actors reusing the same social engineering techniques across platforms.
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