The story of a Facebook ad for a teeth whitening miracle

When Facebook served me an ad for teeth whitening, I was a tad insulted but mostly curious. Let's be honest, most of us can use some whitening, and I was no exception. The product was Lanthome Teeth Whitening Essence which came in a convenient container for only $20. The video was chock full of good looking and very satisfied customers showing off their newly whitened choppers. Was I momentarily tempted? Sure. Who doesn't want their teeth whitened for $20? Did I believe it? I was skeptical, as I am of most things.


I did what I always do - research.

There was a seemingly lively discussion attached to the ad, with quite a few comments, and even some back and forth chatter. At first blush, the people looked real and their comments read fairly natural. There were a few before-and-after pics adorned with enthusiastic likes and feedback. For a moment there, it certainly felt like there was a loyal community of customers who absolutely loved this product, and quite a few others who were interested but just a touch cautious, asking all the right questions about the length of application, mouth sensation, and effectiveness.

Derrick

As I was scrolling the comment thread, I came across a post from Derrick who proudly shared his after photo. He looked very sincere, open, and trustworthy. His face radiated happiness. His teeth looked great. It was by all accounts a perfect shot. But perhaps a bit too good for an average Facebook user.


I clicked through to his Facebook profile to find more amazing details about this well rounded and wholesome individual: judging by his posts and photos, he liked travel, flowers, landscapes, and crafts for kids. The weird thing was, he looked different in every photo of himself:


Curious, I ran his perfect smiling photo through the Google image search. Sure enough, our friend Derreck's perfect shot, his pride and joy, this incontrovertible evidence of how well Lanthome worked was nothing but a stock photo, apparently also being used on colgate.com and a website for an oral surgery practice:




Bryant

Bryant had also posted about his incredible success with Lanthome. He mentioned his struggle with coffee stains, and how Lanthome saved him, and also shared his before-and-after:



I couldn't help taking a closer look at his profile as well. In addition to being a passionate Lanthome customer, Bryant was also very worldly and cosmopolitan, evidenced by his very diverse and international set of Facebook friends, much like Derreck's!



Furthermore, Bryant was apparently gainfully employed and fond of sharing meals with his coworkers:


While Bryant didn't tell us what he and his coworkers did for a living, when run through the Google image search, this lovely photo turned out to be a stock image of ... Middle Eastern men eating.



Needless to say, all the photos of himself looked quite different, most of his posts were very random, with few or zero likes or comments - just like Derreck's.

The icing on the cake was running his before-and-after photo via the Google image search. No big surprise here, it turned out to be borrowed from a makeup artist's Pinterest page showing off her work.





Emerald

And, finally, there was Emerald, equally enthusiastic about Lanthome:



Upon a closer examination, her profile bore the same tell tale signs of a sloppy scam - odd friends, random posts, few if any likes or comments. Her before-and-after photo which she helpfully shared along with her comments sadly did not withstand the power of the Google image search either. It turned out to be a before-and-after of some random person using the Colgate whitening pen. Oh, the irony - Lanthome it was not:



Most of the other discussion participants were just as sketchy. Random posts, very few or no comments, odd collections of friends. Some even had nearly identical posts, made on exactly the same day!


Scamming is hard work. You have to create realistic-looking profiles with believable content, with consistent photos, reasonably correct English, and a convincing volume of interactions, let alone legit-looking friends. That ain't cheap. Good scamming that's tougher to tell comes at a premium. In this case, however, it certainly looked like Winona Market / Tomogala / Lanthome must have selected an entry level scammy package to promote their site and products.

It didn't take very long to determine that this was a scam, and a shoddy job at that. I didn't have to do a deep dive on Facebook profiles and photos when the obviously odd collection of friends for each of the Lanthome's alleged customers was an early giveaway. But it was an entertaining exercise in research to identify the specific flaws in the execution and see how much of the content used by scammers can be tracked to its actual sources using publicly available tools. The lesson is - and I might be stating the obvious - when it comes to realistic-looking testimonials, do your own research. It will pay off.

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