Associated Incidents
A series of ads on social media invite users to invest in UTE shares and participate in the profits from the marketing of energy through an "investment platform" and obtain benefits from 250,000 pesos per month.
At the end of December, an advertisement circulated on Meta's applications (Facebook, Instagram and Threads) in which, using artificial intelligence tools, a news report from the Hispanic-American channel Telemundo was modified. In the video, the presenter announces the initiative and even "interviews" soccer player Luis Suárez, who would also be a user of the investment program. This was alerted by UTE through a statement issued on December 26.
However, in the last few hours, a post inviting people to enter the platform began to spread again on social media. Short-term ads are circulated through profiles on various topics. In this case, a profile called "Braziko" was used, managed by three Ukrainian accounts, and paid for five- and eight-hour ads to appear on Facebook and Instagram starting January 10.
Clicking on the image leads to a website identified with the domain uteinvst.online, whose content is an apocryphal article from El País of Spain announcing the investment project. The article presents alleged success stories in which "high returns" and "full autonomy" are promised with deposits starting at 10,400 Uruguayan pesos.
"I started looking for a job to earn some money. I noticed that many people around me have moved to the Internet, to earn money online, I decided to try it, maybe I was a little lucky, but I saw an advertisement for a UTE investment platform, everything seemed very simple so I registered immediately," says one of the "testimonies."
Throughout the text, a series of links are provided that lead to a portal that simulates being an official UTE website and also has the logos of the Ministries of Economy and Finance and Foreign Affairs. There, a form is presented in a clear phishing maneuver, through which the scammers obtain personal data and means of payment. There is also a message attributed to the president of the company, Silvia Emaldi, in which she states that UTE has decided to "open access to investments."
The web domain used for the maneuver was registered on November 17 by a company called Podoroznyk (from the Ukrainian word for "traveler") and, according to the registry, is based in Latvia. That same administrator has at least 265 registered domains, among which are fake websites for the Clarín media and Latam Airlines.
This case adds to other similar ones that in recent days used the image of Lorena Ponce de León and the Central Bank, also with incentives to supposed investment funds.