Beware the “fake Leonor”. Internet scammers posing as a Spanish royal princess have repeatedly been able to defraud vulnerable individuals in the Hispanic world.
Princess Leonor, 19, the much-beloved heir to the Spanish throne, does not have an official TikTok profile. However, fraudsters have set up dozens of accounts in her name to win trust and trick victims into sending them money, much as another criminal pretending to be the actor Brad Pitt recently duped a woman out of more than $870,000 in France.
The fake Leonors have attracted an army of followers with promises of financial “prizes” and claims that the princess has access to funds for helping the needy. Followers then face escalating demands for payment of “administrative” fees, taxes or legal costs.
Some victims have had calls from a fake Leonor’s “lawyer”, assuring them that the money will be transferred to their account as soon as the fees are paid. Fraudsters have also posed as the princess herself, urging victims to pay up or risk seeing their “prize” go to someone else.
Some of the fake TikTok profiles are reported to have used artificial intelligence to mimic Leonor’s voice and likeness.
“I thought I was talking to Leonor,” said Juana Cobo, a 39-year-old mother of two from a remote region of Guatemala — who did not think it strange that a Spanish royal would ask her for money and sent the fraudsters a total of $800, some of which she had to borrow.
“They sent me a message on TikTok saying I was talking to Princess Leonor and that I had won $100,000 but I needed to pay a tax of 2,200 quetzales [about $250] to free up the money,” she explained in El Pais newspaper.
After she paid, the fake Leonor asked for another $150 to cover “legal fees”. Then Cobo was told there had been a problem with that payment and that she had to make another. They kept on demanding more and more money until Cobo realised she had been tricked.
“I thought I was talking to Leonor.”
“When I told them they were swindlers they disappeared, they blocked me, I didn’t hear from them again.” She has not reported the case to police. “It wouldn’t serve any purpose if they’re in another country. For what?”
Some videos posted by the fake Leonors have attracted millions of views. The fraudulent profiles are filled with gushing messages from supposedly satisfied recipients of big cash awards.
“Princess you’re incredible!” said one. “It’s a lucky day for me, I won the big prize of $200,000, it’s now in my bank account.” Another said: “This is genuine … I registered my name in the link and they’ve put $50,000 in my bank account.”
Carlos Aguilar had a lucky escape. He explained on Spanish television that he had come across one of the Leonor profiles on Facebook and wanted to congratulate the princess “because she was going to be the future queen”.
He left his name and phone number in the hope he might get a WhatsApp message from the princess. Instead he was contacted by her “secretary” who said he was the “beneficiary of a grant” of $100,000 that would be paid into his account if he would pay a $400 “processing fee”.
He backed out after being told to send the money to a bank in the Dominican Republic, which seemed suspicious.
The fake Leonors have attracted an army of followers with promises of financial “prizes.”
The real Leonor and Spain’s royal household have not commented on the affair. The princess has been more and more in the spotlight since turning 18 in 2023, attracting gushing write-ups in the unfailingly supportive Spanish press and uniting disparate points of the political spectrum in praise.
Last week she set off on a great maritime adventure, a six-month naval training cruise aboard a four-masted schooner to ten ports and eight countries around the Americas.
This family ritual — her father, King Felipe VI, made the same voyage, as did her grandfather, Juan Carlos, who abdicated the throne under a cloud of scandal in 2014 — is preparation for her future role not only as Queen but as the military “commander-in-chief”.
One of the ports she will visit, coincidentally, is the Dominican Republic, the apparent base of the scammers.
TikTok said it had removed the fake Leonor accounts. However, several were still operating last week. One, showing the princess in a red military beret, proclaimed: “There are still lots of prizes that I haven’t shared yet.”
Matthew Campbell is a roving correspondent who, in more than 30 years at The Sunday Times of London, has covered numerous wars, natural disasters, and major political stories while serving as the paper’s bureau chief in Moscow in the early 1990s and, later, in Washington, D.C., and Paris
