Types of YouTube spam
Fake financial advisor comments on YouTube
The fake advisor scam is a staged conversation. One account asks an innocent question, “How do I reach out to the FA managing your portfolio?”, and other accounts reply praising a named advisor who turned their savings around. The thread is designed to make a viewer search that name, which leads to a scammer.
By Dan, founder of RemoveSpam · Updated
What it looks like
How do I reach out to the FA managing your portfolio
Real, removed by RemoveSpamThe opener. It looks like a normal viewer question
With the way the market news has been lately, I’ve started looking into financial advisors. May I ask who’s been helping you along the way?
Real, removed by RemoveSpam
Real examples are quoted as posted. Author names are hidden and phone numbers partly redacted.
How the scripted thread works
It starts with a question that sounds genuine: who manages your portfolio, how did you get started, can anyone recommend an advisor. Within minutes, several other accounts reply. One mentions a specific name and how much they made. Another agrees, adds that this person is “hard to reach but worth it”. A third asks how to contact them, and the next reply gives just enough to search.
Every account in the thread belongs to the same operation. Because no single comment contains a link or a number, and each one on its own reads like ordinary conversation, the thread is very hard for keyword filters, and for busy creators, to recognise.
How to spot it
The script has a recognisable shape once you know it:
- An opener asking who manages someone’s money, or for an advisor recommendation
- Several replies within a short time, all naming the same person
- Specific, round profit figures and phrases like “changed my life”
- Accounts with few or no other comments, often created recently
- A final reply that tells people how to find the advisor, without a direct link
Why removing only the replies is not enough
If the opener stays up, a new set of replies tends to appear under it. The whole thread needs to go, and quickly, because it does its work while viewers are reading the comments under a fresh upload. RemoveSpam matches both the openers and the replies against the scripts it has seen, so the thread is removed as a whole.
How RemoveSpam handles this: Scam and impersonation detection.
Common questions
Is a comment asking about financial advisors always a scam?
Not always, but under finance and crypto videos the “who manages your portfolio” opener is one of the most common scam patterns. If several replies quickly recommend the same named person, treat the whole thread as a scam.
What should I tell viewers who already contacted the “advisor”?
To stop sending money, keep records of the conversation, and report it to their bank and local fraud authority. Be wary of anyone who then offers to recover the money for a fee; recovery scams often follow the first one.
Other types of YouTube spam
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