Deepfake Video of Elon Musk Used in Cryptocurrency Scam on YouTube
TapTechNews 24th June, a deepfake video of Elon Musk has been frequently appearing on the YouTube live streaming platform recently and being used to carry out cryptocurrency giveaway scams. In the latest incident, the scammer implemented fraud through a live video that lasted for 5 hours and the video has been deleted. The video shows clips of Musk attending a Tesla event and lures the audience to visit a website with AI-generated voice and deposit Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin to participate in the giveaway. The looping message claims that the system will automatically return double the amount of cryptocurrency you deposit.
During peak hours, the live stream attracted over 30,000 viewers (excluding the possibility that the number of viewers was inflated by bots), and even topped the YouTube live recommended list. The impersonated Tesla account elon.teslastream even has the verification badge of an official artist channel, indicating that the account may have been hacked. After Engadget contacted Google, both the video and the channel have been removed.
TapTechNews noticed that in the past few months, the number of cryptocurrency deepfake scams using the image of Elon Musk has increased significantly, and the scammers have disguised as Musk's company accounts every time. The live stream title of this incident is Tesla is about to release a masterpiece: Tesla that changes the automotive industry. According to Cointelegraph, at the beginning of June, up to 35 impersonated SpaceX accounts carried out similar scams before and after the Starship launch. Mashable had also reported cases of using the solar eclipse heat to carry out the same trickery in April, and in addition, there are also a large number of false live video streams of Musk on the social media platform Reddit.
For many years, cryptocurrency scams targeting Musk's fans on social media have been a common occurrence, and other celebrities have also suffered greatly. Just last Friday, the account of rapper 50Cent was hacked and used to carry out a pump and dump fraud behavior.