Fortnite is one of the world's most popular online games, especially for kids and teens.
According to creator Epic Games, there are over 250 million registered accounts.
It's free to download - the company instead makes money by players paying for an online currency, v-bucks, which can be used inside the game.
Epic Games has been clear that v-bucks can only be bought by them.
Nevertheless, a solid scam has been built up around the game, even in Sweden.
- These include fraudulent accounts and people who have been tricked into sending money, says police Lotta Mauritzson.
Scam sites advertise on Google
A quick Google search for "free v bucks" yields over 112,000,000 results.
Several of the top Google ads are scam sites, and the Youtube advertisement that SVT Nyheter has investigated also leads to a scam page.
But despite the sheer amount, Lotta Mauritzson does not believe that fraud is as organized as it seems.
- I currently have no information that there was organized crime behind it, nor have I heard that it has been particularly successful, she says.
To prevent fraud, adults must become better at educating young people to be critical of sources, Mauritzson says.
- We may think that children are good at understanding the web, but the source criticism is not there in the same way, she says.
Youtube removes the commercial
When SVT Nyheter contacts Google, they choose to download the commercial from Youtube.
But the Google ads remain.
The company's Swedish communications manager, Joakim Larsson, says that they are constantly developing new methods to get rid of misleading advertising.
“Advertising fraud is an ongoing challenge for us.
In 2019, we took down about 2.7 billion ads that in various ways broke the rules, ie 5,000 ads per minute, and that work continues, "he says in an email to SVT.
Lotta Mauritzson urges individuals to always report as soon as they see ad scams on Google and Youtube:
- Google is a huge player and often needs to get several registrations to take something down.
We do that too, of course, but here the power of the people is much stronger.
SVT has tried to contact the companies behind the scam ads but has not received a response.