Logan Paul sent a lookalike to answer questions from the BBC about his cryptocurrency dealings and accusations that he profited from misleading fans.
In the documentary “Logan Paul: Bad Influence?,” which the BBC is airing on Wednesday, filmmaker Matt Shea investigates allegations that the social media personality — whose YouTube channel alone has more than 23 million followers — promoted cryptocurrency projects without revealing he had a financial interest in them, causing prices and the value of his own tokens to spike.
Armed with what the BBC claimed was “new evidence,” Shea had been trying to speak to Paul, but the documentary’s producer and director Jamie Tahsin says he had constantly turned them down. “For several months, Paul refused to talk to the BBC about our investigation,” he wrote in a BBC news story. “Then he appeared to relent, inviting us to interview him at his gym in Puerto Rico.”
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However, the individual who sat down in front of the film crew in Puerto Rico was not Logan Paul. After comically entertaining the notion for a few questions, Shea eventually asks the lookalike, “Is Logan coming?” to which he responds, “I’m right here, bud.” A laughing Shea promptly calls time on the interview. “Let’s get out of here, we’re not doing this,” he says, at which point a crowd shows up shouting abuse aimed at the BBC. A man with a megaphone leads chats of “BBC is vile. They hire pedophiles,” presumably referring to the Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards scandals that rocked the broadcaster.
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“Rather than defend himself about the allegations we’ve been investigation, Logan decided to troll us,” Shea says in the voiceover. Minutes after abandoning the interview, Shea says the production received a lawyer’s letter on behalf of Paul, warning them of the possible consequences if we published our findings.
According to the BBC, shortly before Paul tweeted about a particular crypto coin in 2021, “an anonymous crypto wallet with close connections to his public wallet had traded in the coin.” It said that the anonymous wallet would make $120,000 profit.
