Royal families across Europe have complained for decades that too many eyes follow them. This time the problem is the reverse: someone watched them very closely, took the names and the faces, and started asking for money in their name. On 9 September the office of the Greek royal family issued a statement that reads like a self-defence manual rather than a palace announcement.

The message is short and leaves no room for interpretation: Pavlos of Greece and members of the former Greek royal family do not take part in financial assistance procedures by telephone, video call or internet, and never ask for either money or banking details. When an institution has to write precisely that, it means somebody has already tried.

The scammers' method is not new and requires no technological feat. You open a profile, usually on Facebook, upload genuine photographs that are available everywhere, and wait for someone to believe it. In 2024 a 74-year-old man reported that someone posing as Prince Pavlos had offered him membership of a club with special privileges, in exchange for money and personal details. In 2025 Princess Marie-Chantal discovered a fake Facebook account using her name and her photographs.

The palace's response was to publish an official list of verified accounts. That is an admission that defending against this kind of fraud is no longer the police's job, but the job of the victim whose identity is being stolen. Who is actually supposed to delete these profiles, and who ends up doing it?

Spain has the same story under a different name. In January 2026 the "Princess of Asturias" Foundation warned about scams in which someone posed as Princess Leonor, in wording that leaves no doubt: her highness under no circumstances requests, offers or manages monetary contributions. In July the same foundation reported a far more polished fraud, offering supposed VIP places near the royal family at the awards ceremony, sent via WhatsApp and email, with PDF documents that looked official.

That is the part worth holding on to. These are not letters full of spelling mistakes from a prince in exile. These are documents that look right, with the logos in the correct place, arriving through a communication channel the victim already uses every day. The difference between real and fake came down to whether the recipient knows where to check.

And that is where the story stops being about crowns. If an institution with a palace apparatus, a legal department and the ability to publish an official list still has to publicly beg people not to send money, what chance does an ordinary person have when they get the same message bearing the name of a bank, a municipality or a debt collection firm? Only someone with people to write it for them gets a list of verified accounts.