Santander Teams up with MC Grindah for ‘Deadliest Dupes’ Fraud Campaign

Deadliest Dupes is a three-episode mini-series, fronted by the self-proclaimed lyrical badman of pirate radio, MC Grindah, as he goes undercover to investigate the murky underbelly of scams and fraud and has been created to grab the attention of younger audiences online.

Born out of stats showing the propensity of Gen Z to fall victim to scams, and research into how their behaviours online can make them vulnerable to fraudsters, each episode focuses on fraud that commonly affects younger people. The three videos use humour to land an important scam avoidance message with viewers: ‘Don’t Get Kurupted’.

The three films are:

1) ‘The Identity Thief’: Steves and Grindah come face to face with ‘Fake Steves.’ It’s not long until Grindah inadvertently gives his password away to the smooth-talking scammer.

2) ‘The Online Scammer’: Grindah bumps into a familiar face in Chabuddy G, who demonstrates just how easy it is to end up getting ripped off when buying online.

3) ‘The Money Mule’: Beats provides protection as Grindah meets a notorious money launderer. But it turns out that it’s not just hardened criminals who do time for money laundering, it can happen to regular people if they misuse their bank account.

Industry data shows that in the last year, ID theft among people under 21 has risen by 261 while 50% of money mules are aged 26 or under and 27% are aged 21 or under.

Meanwhile, Santander’s own research shows that those aged under 25 are three times more likely to act on an instruction in scam correspondence, 85% have shared details on Instagram that could leave them open to ID theft and a quarter have entered personal details on a website using unsecure WiFi.

The digitally led campaign will run across Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Paid media will drive people to an online hub where they can find out more about the tricks used by online fraudsters and test their own ‘scam smarts’ with a specially designed quiz.

The campaign was developed by ENGINE and directed by Ben Green at Roughcut TV.

Susan Allen, head of retail and business banking, Santander UK, said: “We’re committed to fighting financial crime and work hard to raise awareness of fraud and scams with all age groups. We recognised that to engage younger audiences with these important messages, we needed to do something different and memorable. We hope that everyone, no matter what age, will enjoy Deadliest Dupes and learn how to stay safe so they Don’t Get Kurupted.”

Jo Moore, creative director, ENGINE, added: “We wanted to create a trojan horse of a campaign, that would teach young people how to avoid losing out to scammers without them even realising they were learning something.”

MC Grindah, Kurupt FM, said: “Ross Kemp, Danny Dyer, Trevor MacDonald - they all think they’re bad and they’re not but guess what I am cos I went to uni... the university of the streets. Just to make sure you know what I mean yeah? It’s not actually a real uni it’s a metaphor - I would never go uni.”

Deadliest Dupes follows previous fraud awareness campaigns run by Santander including its Phish & Chips van which toured the UK handing out free fish and chips and a side portion of advice on avoiding scams. And the Scam Avoidance School introduced in branches in 2018 and to date attended by over 100,000 people.