Scammers use Elon Musk’s deepfake to promote crypto scam

Tesla CEO Elon Musk became the centre of another social media scam as a YouTube Live broadcast used his deepfake to deceive viewers, Engadget reported.

The five-hour-longfraudulent cryptocurrency broadcast featured an AI-generated version of Musk’s voice, encouraging viewers to deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin on a specific website for a promised giveaway.

The scheme claimed that it would “automatically send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited.”

The deceptive broadcast attracted over 30,000 viewers, pushing it to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations. However, suspicions arose that the viewer count may have been artificially boosted by bots.

The account behind the scam, elon.teslastream, had an Official Artist Channel verification badge, suggesting a potential account hack, NewsBytes reported.

Both the video and the channel were promptly removed after Engadget alerted Google of the fraudulent activity.

Deepfake social media scams on rise

The latest incident is part of a growing trend of Musk deepfake scams, using an account posing as one of Musk’s companies.

The cryptocurrency scam follows a recent scam which was titled “Tesla unveils a masterpiece: The Tesla that will change the car industry forever.”

Earlier this month, Cointelegraph reported similar scams involving 35 accounts that were pretending to be SpaceX during the Starship launch.

Additionally, in April, scammers capitalised on the Total Solar Eclipse hype using the same tactic. Fake Musk livestreams were also posted on Reddit recently.

Cryptocurrency scams have consistently targeted Musk’s followers and other celebrities have also fallen prey to such scams.