Portuguese international Bruno Fernandes is the new official brand ambassador of Vietnamese illegal casino QH88 – except he isn’t: the “Bruno Fernandes” featured in the operator’s promotional video is a strikingly realistic AI-generated avatar, the very first of its kind.
By Philippe Auclair
Asian-facing illegal sports betting operators have never shied away from using the names and likenesses of football’s most recognisable players without their authorisation. Very few, in fact, resist the temptation to plaster their apps and websites with action photographs of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and the like. A few players have tried in the past to issue cease and desist notices to those operators – Karim Benzéma is one of them – but in vain. Local regulators, when they exist, rarely police copyright infringements. Pursuing the matter in court is a pipedream: whoever owns and runs these companies is both unidentified and out of reach.
Yet, so far, those illegal casinos had refrained from claiming official endorsements by the game’s biggest superstars.
This is no longer the case. QH88, a Vietnamese illegal casino which appears to be accessible globally without using a VPN, has stolen the identity of Portuguese international and current England’s “Footballer of the Year” Bruno Fernandes to create an AI avatar and present him as their official brand ambassador, which he categorically is not and never will be. Should he endorse an illegal sportsbook, he would be found guilty of a very serious breach of Fifa’s Code of Ethics and find himself on the receiving end of a ban from all football – just as he is about to enter the fray at the 2026 World Cup, one of the key players of a Portuguese team which stands a very good chance to go deep in the tournament and, who knows?, may even win it.
However, visitors to QH88’s website would have every reason to believe that the Manchester United captain had thrown caution to the wind and signed up with team QH88. The illegal casino went to extraordinary lengths to provide “proof” that they got their man: they produced an astonishingly realistic video which purports to show Fernandes putting pen to paper in a “signing ceremony” staged at…Old Trafford, no less.
Mixing fact and fiction
In order to further confuse the viewer, the super-slick 50-second long video mixes genuine match footage from Manchester United’s 2025-26 season with sequences showing the footballer in his “brand ambassador” guise. Fernandes is also shown wearing a Manchester United jersey emblazoned with QH88’s distinctive branding.
This alone should cast serious doubt on the video’s authenticity, as Manchester United would never authorise its star player to exploit the club’s stadium, name, colours and logo unless they were a partner of QH88 themselves, which they most definitely are not.
This clue is telling in itself, but did not constitute incontrovertible proof that the film which plays on a loop on QH88’s landing page was a fake; so Josimar used an external expert to do frame-by-frame analysis of the video to point out evidence of AI-generation. The report is reproduced here in full.
“Lack of independent verification
1. No announcement found on Manchester United’s official website.
2. No announcement found on Manchester United’s official social media channels.
3. No mention was found on Bruno Fernandes’ official social media accounts.
4. No credible press coverage, sponsorship announcement, or commercial partnership announcement located.
5. No evidence that QH88 appears on Manchester United’s official partner or sponsor materials.
6. Questionable stadium branding (The video shows QH88 branding displayed alongside Manchester United and Snapdragon branding at Old Trafford.)
7. No independent photographs, fan videos, media coverage, or club content have been found confirming the presence of QH88 branding at the stadium. Old Trafford is one of the most photographed football stadiums in the world, making the lack of corroborating images a significant red flag.
Continuity errors within the video
1. A lapel badge/pin appears in some shots and disappears in others.
2. Suit details appear inconsistent between scenes, including the jacket’s buttoned/unbuttoned state.
3. The contract seal/logo appears to change appearance between frames.
AI-generation indicators
1. Audience members have a synthetic, repetitive appearance with similar expressions and poses.
2. Event badges and lanyards appear blurred, distorted, or unreadable despite being prominent in the frame.
3. Branding and printed materials lack the clarity normally expected in professional promotional footage.
4. The overall visual style resembles AI-generated corporate advertising content.
Identity verification concerns
1. Facial recognition searches conducted on several individuals appearing in the video produced no results.
2. It is notable that supposedly prominent participants or attendees appear to have no identifiable online presence. This finding is more significant when combined with the other inconsistencies“.
Taken together, these findings point to one conclusion: the video is an extremely sophisticated AI-generated video, a deepfake which our external expert said he had seen another example of just once previously.
Who are QH88?
Josimar had not come across QH88 before, and neither did the industry sources we contacted. Their main facebook page had only one follower at the time of writing, whilst their X account, which was created in April of last year, doesn’t have any.
On the face of it, it’d seem that QH88 is yet another of those myriad sportsbooks which constantly pop up and disappear in Vietnam and elsewhere in southeast Asia – perhaps a temporary springboard to other, established operators. In QH88’s case, this could be the SBO-“Running Man” brand, which is advertised on their website, accompanied by an (unauthorised, of course) photograph of England’s captain Harry Kane; unless it is WBET, “promoted” by Kane’s England team-mate Declan Rice.
This might not be the case here, however. To start with, considerable time, effort and skill went into the making of the “Bruno Fernandes” video, when “springboard” websites tend to be far cruder and offer far less functionality. Moreover, QH88 also hosts a large number of illegal live video links to football games played in a variety of countries, with Australian football featuring prominently, as can be seen in the screenshot below.
This too, suggests an operation with far greater means and ambition than run-of-the-mill ephemeral operators, though Josimar still has to identify who exactly is behind the brand – who is responsible for football’s first-ever deepfake.
Josimar contacted Bruno Fernandes’s management and Manchester United.
