The Princess of Asturias Foundation has published an alert message on its website to warn that “fake profiles have been detected” on social networks that “impersonate the identity of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Asturias” to commit scams. This post was published in 2026, although the scam has been active for over a year: EL PAÍS tracked down several scammers and spoke with victims of this scam in 2024.
Scammers are taking advantage of the fact that neither Princess Leonor nor the Royal House have an official account on TikTok to pretend to be her and impersonate her on fake profiles. These accounts, using artificial intelligence, create videos in which the fake Leonor promises substantial financial assistance to anyone who requests it. To receive it, they say, you just have to pay “a small fee”. Just hundreds of dollars to get help that can reach hundreds of thousands. However, after entering this false “rate”, the scammer continues to demand sums of money until crushing the victim. Then they disappear.
This scam is an updated version of the “Nigerian letters” or “inheritance scam”, only amplified globally thanks to the TikTok algorithm: many of these fake Princess Leonor accounts ask potential victims in their videos to explain in the comments why they need help or to leave their information so that they can contact them. Some, much more aggressive and obvious, go so far as to directly ask for the bank account number to “deposit aid”. The TikTok algorithm rewards and shows more videos that have a high rate of interactions, which is why these messages from the fake princess, which in some cases exceed thousands of comments, are displayed massively: some of the videos located by EL PAÍS have far exceeded a million views.
After the potential victim follows or leaves a comment on some of these accounts, the scammers contact them via private message and ask for their phone number. Sometimes they directly leave a link on their TikTok profile which redirects to their WhatsApp. Then, the potential victim receives a call: if the scammer is a man, he poses as Léonor’s lawyer. If it’s a woman, by the princess herself.
During these calls, the scammers offer to deposit a large sum of money, in some cases exceeding $100,000. To get them back, you must first make a deposit as a “deposit to sign the check” or “taxes”. The amount usually varies between 100 and 200 euros and must be deposited into different Western Union accounts. All the fraudsters’ phones located by EL PAÍS in 2024, as well as all the accounts in which they request the deposit of money, come from the Dominican Republic.
Fraudsters try to make the payment as quickly as possible so that the victim does not have time to realize that it is a scam. If it takes too long, they become very insistent. This is one of the WhatsApp audios that one of the scammers, posing as Leonor’s lawyer, sent to a potential victim, tricking them into making the deposit. Otherwise, they would give “the check” to someone else.
You can hear some of the audio messages that scammers send to victims, as well as the testimony of Juana Cobo, a woman from Nebaj (Guatemala) who was cheated out of 7,200 quetzales (around 880 euros) with this method, in this Hoy en EL PAÍS podcast.
Leonor’s scams have been plaguing TikTok for more than a year, despite the platform’s warning in its community standards that it does not allow “content that promotes or facilitates fraud, scams, or deceptive schemes.” After the publication of the report published in 2024, El PAÍS reported, for months, dozens of fraudulent accounts using TikTok’s reporting tool. The result was always the same: the platform claimed not to violate community standards.
After locating Leonor’s scam in 2024, EL PAÍS asked the Online Fraud Investigation Group of the Cybercrime Unit of the National Police for guidelines or advice to avoid falling for this type of scam. Here’s what they recommend:
- Be wary of profiles that are not official.
- Be wary of any social media account that offers money in a seemingly altruistic manner.
- Do not click on any suspicious links from these types of profiles or offer them any type of personal information.
- If we cannot verify whether it is identity theft, consult a loved one who can provide you with a critical point of view.
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