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  • 2022-04-26 (xsd:date)
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  • Tiger Woods CBD Scam and Fake 'Reviews' Flood Google (en)
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  • Beginning in April 2022, several social media accounts and fake reviews were created to push a purported product named Tiger Woods CBD Gummies. The sales pitches on these pages led to Smilz CBD Gummies and Eagle Hemp CBD Gummies, for example. Some of these products have been associated with several other scams that featured unauthorized and fake CBD endorsements from former talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz, the cast of Shark Tank, actor Keanu Reeves, and Jeopardy host Mayim Bialik, to name a few. Regarding Woods, the truth was that the PGA golfer never endorsed any CBD gummies products. It was all a scam. We documented our findings in what appeared to be less than a week since the scam began running with Woods' name. Social media accounts were created to promote the scam across several platforms. On Facebook, we found at least 31 pages that were named Tiger Woods CBD Gummies. All of them were either brand new or just had their page names changed in the month of April. The fact that there were already this many Facebook pages pushing the scam in the first week it was going on showed the scale of the operation: On Twitter, the following accounts were all created at around the same time: @Tiger_Woods_CBD, @tiger_cbd, @tigerwoodscbd, @TigerGummies, @TigerWoodsPrice, and @Tigerwoods_cbd_. All six of these accounts had the display name, Tiger Woods CBD Gummies. They also said they were based in the united states, which was typed in lowercase letters. Based on other scams we've reported on in the past, we believe that it's likely that this one was at least partially managed from outside of the U.S. Other than Facebook and Twitter, a fake review for Tiger Woods CBD Gummies was published on LinkedIn. We even found a YouTube video that promoted a fake review for the product. It was uploaded on April 26: On top of the social media channels, fake reviews littered the search results in both Google and Google News. We found content promoting the scam for Tiger Woods CBD Gummies and Smilz CBD Gummies on Crunchbase.com, DeviantArt, TechPlanet, Times of CBD, sites.google.com, Google Groups, Patch.com, Top 10 CBD Oil Store, and Scoop.it. Mentions of Tiger Woods CBD Gummies even invaded job listings for emergency personnel, perhaps because the websites would provide good placement in Google search results. For example, we found job listings that were posted and then removed from EMS1.com, Police1.com, and Corrections1.com. One listing created by a community member on Patch.com said that a Tiger Woods CBD Gummies event would soon be held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. However, this was not true. It was likely created with a randomly chosen location to accomplish the same goal as the job listings: to try to get the scam's name to land high up in Google search results. The people who manage these kinds of CBD gummies scams often create misleading ads to push the products. In other words, paid advertising may be created in the future that tries to push death hoaxes or mention allegations against Woods to entice users to click, just as we saw with other similar fake CBD endorsement scams. For example, we previously reported on one such ad that made it look like actor Whoopi Goldberg had died. In reality, she was alive. Upon clicking the ad, the resulting page displayed a scam that falsely claimed Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey were selling CBD gummies. In sum, no, Woods did not endorse a product named Tiger Woods CBD Gummies. It was all a scam that used his image and likeness without his authorization to sell other products with names like Smilz CBD Gummies, Eagle Hemp CBD Gummies, and others. (en)
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