Princess Leonor does not have an official TikTok account, but there are dozens of accounts impersonating her and trying to scam people around the world, especially in Latin America. In these profiles, some of them created with Artificial Intelligence tools and with hundreds of thousands of followers, the fake Princess of Asturias promises a large financial aid to anyone who requests it. To receive it, they say, you only have to pay “a small fee.” Just a few hundred dollars to get help of up to hundreds of thousands. However, after paying this false “fee,” the scammer continues to demand sums of money until they squeeze the victim. Then, they disappear.

“Not only did I lose the money, but I got into a huge debt. I got excited, because they made me get excited, and the only thing I got was to end up in debt,” says Juana Cobo, 39, by phone from Nebaj (Guatemala). “They sent me a message on TikTok telling me that the person speaking to me was Princess Leonor, who had won 100,000 dollars, but that she had to pay a tax of 2,200 quetzales [about 245 euros] to release the money,” she explains. “I thought it was true.”

When Cobo made the first payment, the fake Leonor asked for more money: 1,000 quetzales (about 120 euros) for the Princess's “lawyer costs.” Then, she was told that there had been a misunderstanding with that payment and that she had to make another, this time of 1,500 (185 euros). Then, another. And another. When she realized that it was a scam, it was too late. “When I told them they were scammers, they disappeared, they blocked me and I never heard from them again.” In total, in different payments, she had to pay 7,200 quetzales, about 880 euros. She has not wanted to report it. "It won't do any good. If they are in another country, what's the point?" she laments.

This scam is an updated version of the Nigerian letters or inheritance scam, only amplified globally thanks to TikTok's algorithm: many of these fake Princess Leonor accounts ask potential victims in their videos to explain in the comments why they need help or to leave their details so they can be contacted. Some, much more aggressive and obvious, even directly request the bank account number to "make the aid deposit." TikTok's algorithm rewards and shows more videos that have a high rate of interactions, so these posts by the fake princess, with thousands of comments, are shown massively: some exceed a million views.

Over the last few weeks, EL PAÍS has tracked and followed dozens of these fake Leonor profiles and people who had contacted them to check their modus operandi. After leaving comments on some of these accounts, they contact the victim by private message and ask for their phone number. Sometimes, they directly leave a link on their TikTok profile that redirects to their WhatsApp. Afterwards, the potential victim receives a call: if the scammer is a man, he pretends to be Leonor's lawyer. If it is a woman, he pretends to be the princess herself.

In these calls, the scammers offer to deposit a large amount of money, which in some cases exceeds $100,000. To collect them, you must first make a deposit as a "deposit to be able to sign the check" or "taxes." The amount usually ranges between 100 and 200 euros and must be deposited into different Western Union accounts. All the scammers' telephone numbers that EL PAÍS has located, as well as all the accounts to which they ask the money to be deposited, are from the Dominican Republic.

The scammers try to make the payment as quickly as possible so that the victim does not have time to realize that it is a scam. If it is delayed, they become very insistent. This is one of the WhatsApp audios that one of the scammers, posing as Leonor's lawyer, sent to a potential victim, urging her to make the deposit. If not, they would give "the check" to another person:

See the original source for the recording.

In another version of the scam, somewhat more elaborate, they try to camouflage the scam with a very simple contest. And surreal: a fake Princess Leonor, who moves and speaks using Artificial Intelligence tools, says that if you manage to stop a moving image in a specific position, you will be able to access help. The most popular account of this version of the scam has more than 410,000 followers on TikTok:

See the original source for the recording.

EL PAÍS has contacted TikTok Spain to alert them of this scam and, after reviewing the content, they have deleted several of these profiles for violating the community rules. However, many of them are still active. Some, since last July. EL PAÍS has also alerted the Royal Family, which has declined to make statements. The Royal Family does not have profiles on TikTok, a loophole that scammers take advantage of: they add a blue 'check' to their profile photo to pass themselves off as verified accounts.

The target of the fake Princesses of Asturias: elderly and vulnerable people

The Online Fraud Investigation Group of the National Police Cybercrime Unit confirmed to EL PAÍS that, for the moment, there are no cases of the fake Leonor scam in Spain, although the bulk of the victims sought by the scammers, according to analysis of dozens of these fake profiles, are elderly people (in some versions they claim that they only "help" people over 60 years old), from Latin America and, very especially, in vulnerable situations. This was the case of Juana Cobo: "I have nothing, I am an orphan and I don't even have my own house," says this Guatemalan woman, who has two children in her care. "I wanted the money to get ahead."

Cobo says she didn't even have the amount the scammers demanded. "I had to borrow from a relative," she says. "Now I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay them back." The total amount Cobo had to pay is practically double the minimum wage in Guatemala, very close to the average wage in the country, according to data from the United Nations.

A scam that is more than 200 years old

The fake Leonor scam is just the latest version of a scam that is more than 200 years old. Historian Martín Turrado, who specializes in the history of the Police in Spain, says in his book Estudios sobre Historia de la Policía y Gentes de Malvivir (Visión Libros, 2006) that this trick was put into circulation at the beginning of the 19th century under the name of "the hidden treasure", in which the victim was made to believe that there was a buried treasure and that, if he helped financially to unearth it, he would be offered part of the loot.

Turrado explains that the scam became popular because during the War of Independence (1808 - 1814) rumours began to circulate that many people buried their belongings to prevent Napoleon's army from taking them. "With this background," Turrado says in the book, "the swindlers found a plot for their story that was credible enough for the cousin to part with the money, which is what this business is all about."

Already in the 20th century, the scam became popular in Spain under the name "Nigerian letters" or "Nigerian prince", because the scam was carried out through letters that came from organized groups of scammers from Nigeria who pretended to be a prince from that country looking for an heir. At the beginning of the 21st century, email became the most commonly used channel: Snopes, a website specialising in debunking hoaxes, has records of this type of email dating back to 2003. In the Snopes example, the scammers present themselves as staff at the Swiss bank HSBC. In the last decade, it began to be carried out through private messages on Facebook and Twitter.

Currently, “online fraud is amassing a lot of money and that gives scammers a lot of resources,” explains the Online Fraud Investigation Group of the National Police Cybercrime Unit. This allows scammers to ‘buy’ credibility: they can buy accounts that already have thousands of followers to make it easier to pass them off as authentic, buy followers, bots or small fake accounts to make positive comments. Although none of these Leonor profiles are real, many of them are full of messages thanking them for having “received a great prize” from the princess. This makes potential victims believe that help exists.

How to avoid falling for this type of scam

EL PAÍS has asked the Online Fraud Investigation Group of the National Police Cybercrime Unit for guidelines or advice to avoid falling for this type of hoax. This is what they recommend:

• Be wary of profiles that are not official.
• Be wary of any social media account that offers money in an apparently altruistic way.
• Do not click on any suspicious link that comes from this type of profile and do not offer them any type of personal information.
• If we cannot verify whether it is a case of impersonation, consult someone in our environment who can provide a critical view.