The YouTube “girl with cancer” who has stolen more than half a million dollars

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The Avast team has discovered a new scam on the Internet. This used a series of emotionally charged YouTube videos starring a “girl with cancer” who desperately begged us through tears for help to pay for treatment for her illness. These have turned out to be a fairly organized scam that has managed to raise more than $500,000 in a very short time. We tell you more about it.

All of us must be careful not to fall for any type of scam, either like this one on YouTube or other more direct ones like phone scams. Unfortunately, we are going to come across many attempts of these frequently, since in the world there are many undesirable that, without scruples, will do anything to try to scam us.

A scam of more than 500,000 dollars

As we say, the Avast Threat Labs team has identified a new scam that was circulating on the YouTube platform. In this we could see an ad in video format where a little girl appears sitting with a hospital gown. She was wearing a shaved head and cries as she speaks to the camera. She herself is the one who informs the viewer of the video that she has cancer and that her family cannot take care of her treatment.

The video is very shocking for viewers given the high level of emotional content it has. Following this message, offer them the ability to donate through a linked fundraising page. In this way, visitors can help save “Alexandra” (or Ariela, Ksenia or Barbara, depending on the video).

In the words of Pavel Novak, threat operations analyst at Avast: “Although there is no way of knowing who this girl really is or what her situation is, we do know for sure that it is a scam and that the more than $640,000 already collected will not be used for treatment. We have found a whole selection of videos of the same girl, with appeals in Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew. Videos with similar appeals have also been detected, but with different girls.

In total, the videos of this “girl with cancer” scam have received a whopping 10 million views. Along with the facts mentioned above, the Avast team has found a number of other clues that point to a scam:

  • All domains were recently registered.
  • The videos use anonymous email addresses, such as 6554997@gmail.com or asd1010850@gmail.com.
  • “Alexandra” and “Ariela” have the same contact email addresses, even though the videos are of two different girls from very different geographies.
  • The address can be traced to a residential complex in Jerusalem.

In addition, the videos use hyperbolic statements, such as the fact that the girl’s cancer has spread throughout her body. These videos ask for donations to treat said cancer, although if the cancer has already spread throughout the girl’s body, it is probably already too late for any type of medical treatment. These messages lack any type of specificity, which is an unequivocal alarm signal common in many online scams.

Since the era of this “girl with cancer” was discovered, Avast researchers have blocked all related domains that could be found, protecting almost 1,000 users in just 48 hours. In addition, this same group has reported all these videos to YouTube, and the scam to the Israel CERT. Lastly, similar scams spread via email, although Avast researchers suspect the two campaigns are unrelated.

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