Elon Musk Deepfake on YouTube Scam Nets $165K in Crypto

SpaceX and BitOK have uncovered a fake cryptocurrency giveaway scheme where scammers pretended to be Elon Musk. The scammers successfully collected $165,000 in donations through this fraudulent activity.

The plan reportedly included using a manipulated video of Elon Musk created through deepfake technology in live YouTube broadcasts. According to the information shared, viewers were encouraged to visit a website by scanning a QR code shown during the broadcast.

The instructions on the page asked people to send cryptocurrency to specific addresses to take part in the giveaway. Participants were promised a refund of their cryptocurrency to their wallets along with a 200% bonus after the transaction was processed. 

Subsequently, fraudulent giveaway announcements claiming to be from SpaceX were posted on a YouTube channel with 180,000 subscribers.

The total funds collected totaled $165,000 which included BTC, ETH, DOGE & USDT. They managed to collect a total of 2.48 BTC, which is around $91,566 based on the current exchange rate.

A sum of around $2,339 in USDT stablecoin and approximately 33.36 ETH (equivalent to about $65,449 based on the current exchange rate) was received.

It received about $207 in USDT BEP-20 and approximately $1,093 in USDT on the Polygon sidechain and got 58,164 Dogecoin, which is worth about $5,045 based on the current exchange rate.

Also Read: Elon Musk Slams NFTs Saying “It’s Just URL to JPEG”