What was claimed
A BBC article shows Martin Lewis being arrested and describes how he has endorsed “an AI-powered trading platform” called Swiftgate Montark.
Our verdict
The page in question is not a BBC article, and Martin Lewis has not been arrested or endorsed such a program.
A link to a fake BBC article supposedly showing the consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis being arrested, alongside claims he has endorsed “an AI-powered trading platform” called Swiftgate Montark, has been shared on Facebook.
But Mr Lewis, who founded Money Saving Expert (MSE), has not been arrested. Nor has he endorsed such a platform. He has never posted about it and no reference to it appears on the MSE website. A spokesperson for MSE confirmed the article is fake.
Mr Lewis has previously written about scam ads using the phrase “Martin Lewis arrested” and has included overlaid text reading “I don’t do ads” on his social media profile picture.
The BBC also confirmed the page, which appears to impersonate a BBC news article, is fake.
The fake page has a BBC logo at the top and various references to BBC News implying the article was written by the outlet.
It is headlined: “MARTIN LEWIS EXPOSES ON ITV:The Secret Platform British Elites Have Been Using to Get Rich While Telling YOU to ‘Save More and Work Harder’.”
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But the page’s URL starts with “fairgrovento.info”, not “bbc.co.uk/news”, and the article looks very different to one you might find on the BBC News website. Nor could we find any trace of this article being published by the BBC.
The image at the top of the fake article, which was shared as an ad on Facebook, also appears to show Mr Lewis being arrested by two police officers. But this image isn’t real and was likely made using artificial intelligence (AI). The male police officers appear to be wearing bowler hats, which only female officers wear, and there is garbled text on the sleeve of the officer on the right.
We’ve fact checked false claims about Mr Lewis circulating on Facebook before. In 2018 he took Facebook to court over adverts using his name or picture without permission to promote investment schemes he had nothing to do with.
In 2019, he dropped the case after Facebook agreed to donate £3 million to Citizens Advice for an anti-scams project, pay Mr Lewis’ legal fees and launch a scam ads reporting tool.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Martin Lewis has not been arrested and did not endorse a trading platform as the article claims.
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