The YouTube news channel of a major Australian broadcaster, the Seven Network, was hijacked by crypto scammers — showing videos of a deep fake Elon Musk talking about crypto.
7News’ YouTube channel was rebranded to appear as automaker Tesla, showing an artificial intelligence-generated fake of the firm’s CEO saying he’s giving away crypto.
The AI-faked Musk tout a common “double-your-money” scam, promising to send back double the amount of any crypto sent to an address.
At the time of writing, about 150,000 were viewing three livestreams showing the fake Musk on the 7News channel. It’s unknown how many viewers are bots in a bid to boost viewership.
Links to the 7News YouTube channel were broken, but the hijacked channel still showed the news organization’s verification tick.
A Seven spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald that the company was aware some of its YouTube channels were not appearing as normal.
“Seven is investigating and working with YouTube to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
A YouTube spokesperson told Cointelegraph that after 7News alerted it to the compromise, it “immediately investigated the claim and is taking steps to secure the accounts, including stopping the unauthorized livestreams.”
A website shared by the scammers asks for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGE), with the listed addresses holding just over $11,000 in total between them.
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Musk is a popular public figure for scammers to fake and use in crypto scams.
Earlier this month, more than 35 YouTube livestreams depicted fake Musks in similar double-your-money scams, which were all spun up to coincide with SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch.
Hong Kong’s securities regulator closed down a firm sporting AI-faked videos of Musk on its social media accounts and website, which claimed he developed the technology for its supposed AI crypto trading service.
The attack on 7News’ YouTube account comes the same week as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian reported on June 24 that parent company Seven West Media would cut 150 jobs, which impacted some marketing roles.
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Update (June 28, 4:05 am UTC): This article has been updated to add comment from YouTube.
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