Mary Berg has long been a recognizable face after winning the third season of MasterChef Canada and hosting a slew of other cooking programs, including daytime talk show "The Good Stuff with Mary Berg." Recently, social media ads have appeared claiming she's been arrested for a "big scandal" that she is "ashamed of," and linking to an apparent news article about the story. This is false. Berg has not been arrested nor is she involved in such a scandal, and the article is fake.
In a series of ads on X, formerly known as Twitter, made over December and January, posts have shared links and photos that depict alleged CTV News reports.
Some of the posts include manipulated photos of Berg in handcuffs being led by police. The chyron running across the bottom of the images next to CTV News logos in several posts says, "Mary Berg's career is over after her on-air remarks."
Captions included in the posts say things such as "", "" and ""
Some of the posts link to a fake news article about Berg advertising a cryptocurrency trading platform called Immediate Vortex.
Rating: False
When ºÃÉ«tvsought comment from Berg and her employer Bell Media, which also owns CTV News, spokeswoman Elysia Circelli said the company is aware of "the ongoing issue of fake advertisements targeting Mary Berg."
"Bell Media actively reports the fraudulent content to ensure swift removal," she wrote in an email.
"We encourage social media users to remain vigilant against these deceptive ads and report suspicious content to the platform they're using."
Linking to lies
Some of the posts about Berg link to designed to look like CTV News' website. It bears the company's logo and design flourishes, but the URL does not match CTV's .
The page has a story about Berg under the title "Big scandal: Citytv management refuses to comment on its employee Sid Seixeiro." Seixeiro is co-host of the "Breakfast Television" morning show on Citytv, a station owned by Bell rival Rogers.
The article begins with claims that Seixeiro had a "heated discussion" with Berg on "Breakfast Television."
"During the heated discussion, Sid Seixeiro questioned the truthfulness of Berg's words, calling her a liar right in front of thousands of live viewers," the story says. "In response to the incident, the TV channel's management decided to remove the interview from the air, refusing to comment on the situation and the behavior of its anchor Sid Seixeiro."
An interview transcript is posted below with a note saying editorial staff decided to post it "despite all the difficulties."
When Rogers, "Breakfast Television" and Seixeiro were asked for comment, Citytv spokeswoman Charmaine Khan confirmed the claims and article are "completely false."
"Our legal team has contacted the website registrar to take down the page," she wrote in an email.
Trading on the truth
The article claims that Berg says investors can make big returns with small investments using the platform.
The article links to what it claims to be , which shares the same URL with the fake CTV News article.
The website says it is a trading platform open to ºÃÉ«tvs and features an image and supposed endorsement from David Thomson, chairman of Toronto-based software company and news agency Thomson Reuters, and another from retired journalist Kevin Newman.
Contact information for Immediate Vortex was not available on the website. A Google search of the company name brought up several other "official" websites purporting to either connect would-be investors with experts or offer cryptocurrency trading. All of the sites requested personal information to sign up for services.
"David Thomson has no association with this organization," Thomson Reuters spokesperson Kent Carter said in an email.
Newman also confirmed he has not endorsed the website.
"Those people have been using my image in a number of identical scams under different names," he said in a LinkedIn message.
"It’s not the first time it’s happened to me and I’ve learned it’s really hard to figure out who they are to try to stop it."
Investment investigation
The Immediate Vortex web page says the company works with all major cryptocurrency exchanges and says it integrates seamlessly with Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Poloniex and Bittrex.
Immediate Vortex is not listed as one of the cryptocurrency trading platforms in Canada by the ºÃÉ«tv Securities Administrators, the umbrella group for Canada's provincial and territorial securities regulators.
Investment scams, particularly cryptocurrency fraud, were among the with the highest levels of reported victim losses in Canada in 2022, according to a report from the RCMP. The ºÃÉ«tv Anti-Fraud Centre offers on how to avoid such scams.
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