The Kenyan music producer has disowned the page which copies information from his legitimate page.
Syndicated story by Pesacheck.
This Facebook page impersonating music producer Magix Enga, and offering online classes in his name is a HOAX.
The bogus page claims that the online classes are in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has confined many people to their homes making access to such services difficult.
The post has instructions on how to sign up for the classes with the first step being to send a chorus of their song to a provided Gmail-prefixed address.
“I’m gonna (sic) use your Chorus to create your beat then send it back to your email. After receiving your vocals I will do mixing and mastering then send you the final project mp3, wav, performance track, and three-piece,” reads the next instructions.
Finally, the post cautions the class attendees to only use verified accounts and get in touch via a provided phone number.
The post is accompanied by a screenshot containing texts reiterating the same information.
However, the Facebook page in question is not the legitimate social media page of the music producer.
A look through the timeline of the legitimate page shows that the music producer shared the post in question on 7 July 2021. It is this post that appears to have been cut and pasted on the imposter page replacing Enga’s contact number.
The music producer’s page is called ‘Magix Enga’ and has a verified checkmark. By the time of writing this fact check, the page had 61, 000 likes and 69, 326 followers.
The page also contains his contact number which is different from the contact number provided by the impostor page. The display image of the page is a photograph of the music producer in front of a waterfall, and the cover image is a graphic containing the words ‘Stress Free’ written on two arrow signs pointing towards opposite directions.
While the impostor page contains a similar display and cover image as the legitimate one, it does not have a verified checkmark. The imposter page has 191,000 likes which is 130,000 more than the likes on the legitimate one.
The Facebook page transparency information shows Magix Enga’s page was created on 22 February 2018.
On the other hand, the imposter one was created on 13 September 2017, making it older than the legitimate page.
In a Facebook post on 16 July 2021, Magix Enga disowned the Facebook page in question.
“Magix Enga Facebook page is verified, share this to stop scammers,” reads the post.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook page impersonating music producer Magix Enga, and promising to offer online classes in his name and finds it to be a HOAX.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by Managing Editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.