Jim Ratcliffe Storms Out of BBC Interview Over Financial Details

The billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has stormed out of a BBC interview after presenter Laura Kuenssberg revealed details of his personal financial affairs – and now the episode has been removed from iPlayer.

Among the detail in the piece is that Ratcliffe has been using an online investment platform to make money. The report says although the site has been kept secret, other people have used it too, and they have made a fortune. There is a link to the site where you can trade cryptocurrency, stocks and shares.

Follow the link, though, and you end up on the clone of a legitimate website.

Typically once you have given your details on this site you will be contacted on the phone by a scammer who will attempt to persuade you to sign-up to a different investment website and hand over your money. There will not be any real investments – the sole purpose of the fraudsters is to get hold of your cash.

The Guardian is one of many news organisations that fraudsters are using in a bid to find victims.

Respected news sites are mirrored then manipulated with fake information in the hope that readers will not be able to tell the difference.

The name and image of the financial campaigner Martin Lewis have been used by fraudsters in AI-generated false stories, made to appear as if they are on the BBC News site, among others. Again, there are links to an investment site within the article.

A spokesperson for the Guardian says: “The Guardian is one of several trusted media companies whose brand and reputation is exploited by criminals who are scamming victims with fake articles, fabricated headlines or imagery.

“The Guardian is an active member of the UK Home Office taskforce working group exploring cross-industry solutions to combat malicious scam ads. We enforce rigorous brand safety controls and strict compliance to protect readers in our own environments.

“Social media and advertising platforms have the greater visibility required to detect, block and prevent some of this activity at source and need to do more.”

What it looks like

The article links appear on social media feeds. Click on them and you end up on a page that looks like the Guardian, or another news website. The subject of the false articles differ. As well as the Jim Ratcliffe piece, another says that David Attenborough has made money through an investment platform.

The article looks convincing in parts, with many of the design features identical to the real Guardian website. The bylines of real reporters are also used. One reader who wrote in to the Guardian said a fake she saw was a “very good clone”.

However, the headline is typically much longer than you would normally see in a Guardian article.

Full Fact, the factchecking charity, says that an image used on the fake article about Ratcliffe uses a SynthID watermark, which means that it was created using Google AI tools.

If they do click on a link, readers are taken to a clone of a trading website. In the case reported by a Guardian reader, this was made to look like the Kraken trading platform. From there, they are encouraged to invest their money.

The links can vary, sometimes directing to other fake investment sites, masquerading as legitimate platforms.

What you can do

Check the URLs you are being sent to.

Be sceptical. While the Guardian does cover investments, it does not promote companies or provide highlighted links such as those in the adverts.

Nick Percoco, the Kraken chief security officer, said anyone who guaranteed returns using the name of the company is a fraud.

“Criminals clone our brand precisely because it is trusted, then use invented news stories and AI‑generated images to push people toward a copycat site that quietly takes their money,” he said. “We actively monitor for these impersonation domains and work with registrars, hosting providers, and platforms to get them taken down, and we refer the networks behind them to law enforcement.”

Kraken says people can report suspicious sites on its own website.