Key Points
United Patriot is one of four ecommerce companies identified by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) that have been advertising merchandise, often aimed at Trump supporters, using different levels of misinformation and hate speech...
It is just one of hundreds of US-focused posts hosted on a network of Facebook pages run largely from Nigeria aimed at extracting money for sports betting scams..
An investigation by Nigerian media outlet HumAngle reported in September that the wider network, which may be as large as 240 Facebook pages, appears to scam people out of money by offering them the opportunity to profit from high-odd bets placed on what the pages say are fixed sports matches..
To attract users to these scams, the pages have been boosting engagement by publishing political contentin particular, conspiracy theories and false claims about the US presidential race..
Daniel Roberts, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, tells TBIJ: Scammers persistently target people online and in the real worldand thats why we work with governments, NGOs, and law enforcement agencies to deter bad actors..
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