Dick Smith caught in fake cryptocurrency web scam

Entrepreneur Dick Smith has become embroiled in a web scam operating via ads on The Guardian targeting cash-strapped pilots.

Dick Smith at home in Terry Hills in Sydney with his helicopter. Picture: John Feder

Australian entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith has been embroiled in a web scam promoting fake cryptocurrency, that appears to be targeting members of the aviation industry.

Ads published on The Guardian’s website and on the professional pilots’ rumour network pprune.org, use Mr Smith’s image to promote the purchase of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

The ads then link to a landing page which appears to be a legitimate news article quoting Mr Smith as endorsing investment in cryptocurrencies.

The article in turn links to fake cryptocurrency websites, believed to be operated by a criminal syndicate.

Mr Smith’s lawyers have now threatened The Guardian with legal action after the offending advertisements continued to appear on the online newspaper’s website.

“Mr Smith is determined to ensure the cryptocurrency scam promptly comes to a permanent end,” wrote lawyer Mark O’Brien in a letter to The Guardian editor Lenore Taylor.

“While we acknowledge that The Guardian Australia does take the fraudulent advertisements down once notified, that does not prevent your Australian readers from falling victim to this prolific cryptocurrency scam.”

Mr O’Brien said Mr Smith demanded The Guardian immediately take steps to ensure its advertising algorithms were updated to prevent the future publication of any advertisements in Australia that possess the common features of the fraudulent ads in question.

“If we do not receive a satisfactory response within 14-days of the date of this letter, our instructions are to commence defamation proceedings against The Guardian Australia and its related entities,” Mr O’Brien said.

One ad featuring Mr Smith’s face in front of an Australian flag carries the words “D. Smith scared Australian banks, he told how to make money easy (sic)”.

Another using a similar picture said “get rich in a few days; this method has helped thousands of Australians”.

Mr Smith feared that by targeting users of pprune as well as The Guardian, the scammers were trying to prey on members of the aviation industry under financial pressure as a result of the COVID crisis.

As a former chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and holder of numerous aviation records, Mr Smith is very well known in the industry, and regularly posts on pprune.

The Guardian declined to comment but it is understood the website’s UK owner had escalated the issue to Google after its own efforts to block the ad failed.