Arabad | How To Grow Rich During The Pandemic - A film by Emirates NBD and Dubai Police warning about online frauds

How To Grow Rich During The Pandemic - A film by Emirates NBD and Dubai Police warning about online frauds

Posted on 2021 Feb,26

As part of its commitment to safe, secure banking, Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT region, in partnership with Dubai Police joined hands with Leo Burnett, Dubai to launch a UAE-wide anti-phishing awareness campaign to educate the public on how to identify and protect themselves against highly deceptive tactics fraudsters employ.

For the past few weeks, social media has been in a frenzy about the identity of this ultra-rich man who lives an outrageous life and addresses himself as just an artist on his Instagram handle @jjj_jefferson.

The truth was finally revealed through a social-satire comedy film by Emirates NBD and Dubai Police in which viewers found out that James Jefferson was actually a fraudster!

The film is part of a new anti-phishing campaign ‘How To Grow Rich During The Pandemic’ that aims to raise awareness among people about the tricks fraudsters are resorting to to defraud people during the pandemic.

Throughout the film we see the fraudster, James Jefferson, play different roles – a banker, an immigration officer, a policeman, a CEO, an investment expert, even a vaccine supplier – so convincingly that in his words ‘…everything becomes easy.’ He is so good at what he does that he ends up writing a book titled "How To Grow Rich During The Pandemic" to inspire his ‘fans’.

The campaign is based on a real insight, which is that in 2020 online frauds increased by at least 250% in the UAE. In just Q2, 600,000 phishing attacks were reported.

Fraudsters posed as bankers and asked for customers’ account details saying the ‘bank was updating its database due to Covid-19’. They also posed as charities asking for donations to save the lives of Covid-infected people in economically challenged countries. These days the fraudsters are posing as government health departments and tricking people into registering for fake vaccines. They are stealing the personal details of those who register and using the details to access people’s bank accounts, social media accounts, and more.

Commenting on the campaign, Rafael Augusto, Executive Creative Director, Leo Burnett Dubai said, “Fraudsters are immoral humans who are even taking advantage of a pandemic to trick people. They are preying on people’s inherent goodness, their trust, and the challenges they are facing due the pandemic.
The main character in the film is a single despicable mix of all fraudsters. We used dark humour to tell the story of a heartless fraudster who mocks the misery of his victims before his greed and ego eventually lead to his downfall.”

The campaign sheds light on the fact that although fraudsters might be sitting miles away, the internet and social media bring them dangerously close to us. It urges people to never share their password or CVV, never trust unverified vaccine registrations links, and never wire money or make a donation without proper verification. Because when they don’t verify, they make a fraudster’s job easy.