Three Facebook (FB) pages are using the name of Kilimanjaro Tiwaquen, a Filipino licensed physician with 4.1 million followers on the platform, to promote a niacinamide toothpaste product.
“I’m not endorsing the Niacinamide toothpaste,” Tiwaquen said in a March 26 FB post. He also told netizens that his verified FB page has a blue check mark.
Yanjiayi Niacinamide Toothpaste, which the doctor allegedly endorsed, is not included in the Food and Drug Administration’s list of registered cosmetic products.
A total of five posts, created by the imposter pages, bore this caption: “Mayroon ka bang masamang hininga at dilaw na ngipin? Subukan itong Niacinamide toothpaste (Do you have bad breath and yellow teeth? Try this niacinamide toothpaste).”
The fake posts carried altered photos which made it look like Tiwaquen was holding the toothpaste. It edited these images:
- A photo of Tiwaquen holding his TikTok Star of the Year award, posted on Instagram on April 3; and
- A photo of him in a white coat while holding a pen and a medical chart, posted on FB on Aug. 27, 2020.
The earliest version of the posts appeared on March 21, a day after World Oral Health Day. All five posts contain links to bogus websites (osakastore.click, kobestore.click, shopmanila.click) that ask for personal information.
FB pages Doc Killimanguru (created on Feb. 15, 2023), Dr. Kilimanguru (created on July 25, 2022), and Dr. Kilimanguru (created on Sept. 23, 2022), were behind the bogus FB posts which got a total of over 17,159 interactions.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)