This purported ‘The Indian Express’ article promoting investments by prominent businessmen is fake - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 8, 2023
Update (08 August 2023):
Another post sharing an URL and the screenshot of a purported article published by ‘The Indian Express’ is being shared on social media claiming that Infosys Co-Founder Narayana Murthy, a Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, launched a new trading platform that will help every citizen of India to have stable passive income.
But the URL shared in the post leads to a dubious phishing website as it is different from the URL of ‘The Indian Express’. ‘The Indian Express’ did not publish any such article reporting a new trading platform said to be announced by Narayana Murthy. On searching for further details regarding this fake website, we found that this fake website with the domain name ‘https://indian-expresslive.com/’ was registered on 02 June 2023. The Registrar’s name was mentioned as ‘NameCheap, Inc’.
Update (17 April 2023):
Another post sharing an URL and the screenshot of a purported article published by ‘The Indian Express’ is being shared on social media claiming that Nandan Nilekani, an Indian Businessman and co-Founder of tech giant Infosys, had invested  Rupees 892 Million in a new trading platform to make ordinary people richer. But the URL shared in the post directs to an unrelated article published by ‘The Indian Express’ on 28 April 2022. The article reported about Nandan Nilekani’s new ambitious goal of helping PM Narendra Modi in building an open network system that can create a freely accessible online system where traders and consumers can buy and sell everything online.
According to the article, the objective behind this initiative is to eventually curb the online domination of Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart e-commerce sites. The article did not report anything about Nandan Nilekani investing in any new trading platform to help poor people in the country.
Denying these social media rumours about him launching a crypto project, Nandan Nilekani in a tweet on 15 February 2022 stated-“You may have encountered a post on various social media platforms claiming that I have launched a crypto project. This is #fakenews! Please avoid clicking on it and report it as misleading/false information on the platform where you see it.” Several news websites have published articles reporting Nandan Nilekani’s clarification about these false claims about him launching a crypto project to help poor people.
You may have encountered a post on various social media platforms claiming that I have launched a crypto project. This is #fakenews! Please avoid clicking on it and report it as misleading/false information on the platform where you see it.
Update (09 October 2022):
Another post with a similar phishing URL of a purported article published by ‘The Indian Express’ that talks about a special report on Mukesh Ambani’s secret investment is being shared on social media. But, as explained below, ‘The Indian Express’ did not publish any such articles reporting such a new cryptocurrency investment promoted by prominent personalities.
Published (11 September 2022):
A post sharing an URL of a purported article published by ‘The Indian Express’  is being shared on social media claiming that thousands of people were raking in millions of rupees in a new cryptocurrency investment that is said to be advised by the Indian Business Tycoon Gautam Adani. This purported article reported that Gautam Adani, during an interview with Sonal Mehrotra Kapoor on Good Morning India, advised people to invest in a new cryptocurrency auto-trading program called Ethereum Code, for making money in a short time. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: ‘The Indian Express’ article that reported a cryptocurrency investment suggested by Gautam Adani.
Fact: The purported ‘Indian Express’ article shared in the post is from a dubious & fake website. ‘The Indian Express’ did not publish any such article reporting such a new cryptocurrency investment promoted by Gautam Adani. Gautam Adani did not promote Etherium Code cryptocurrency in any of his interviews. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On carefully observing the purported article shared in the post, one can see the masthead of the purported article stating ‘The Indian Expres’, which is different from the ‘The Indian Express’ masthead printed on the original news website. Further, the URL shared in the post indicates that it leads to a dubious phishing website as it is different from the URL of the ‘Indian Express’. Also, we could find several grammatical errors in the purported article shared in the post.
On searching for further details regarding this fake website, we found that this fake website with the domain name ‘rsnmdfgh5l.digital’ was registered on 12 May 2022. The Registrar’s name was mentioned as ‘NameSilo, LLC.  The registrar contact organization was mentioned as ‘See PrivacyGuardian.org’. On opening the home page of this website, it states, ‘We’re Coming Soon.. We’re working on our new website. Join our newsletter and get notifed’. So, it can be confirmed from all these details that the purported Indian Express article shared in the post is published by a dubious website.
When we searched to check whether ‘The Indian Express’ had published any such article reporting the new cryptocurrency investment said to be advised by Gautam Adani, we could not find any such news report on the official website of ‘The Indian Express’. Earlier, ‘The Indian Express’ through the tweets clarified about similar fake articles attributed to the Indian Express on social media. We could not find any video of Money-control Editor, Sonal Mehrotra Kapoor, interviewing Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani. Also, when we searched to check whether Gautam Adani had advised people to invest in Ethereum, we could not find any news report confirming this information.
#FakeNewsAlert | A website called https://t.co/e4FzYarnIt has posted a story trying to look like an https://t.co/XYlZoUMMsK page. This has nothing to do with The Indian Express and is a misuse of our masthead. pic.twitter.com/smZurJsXmA
Ethereum Code is a dubious cryptocurrency trading platform that asks users to provide names and e-mail addresses to join the community. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the purported Indian Express article shared in the post is fake.
To sum it up, this purported Indian Express article reporting a new cryptocurrency investment said to be promoted by Gautam Adani is fake.