A fake Tesla channel on YouTube with a sizable following has used a deepfake of tech-billionaire Elon Musk to lure viewers to an apparent phishing site. The video hooked viewers with a provocative populist-bait title: “LIVE NEWS: Elon Musk joined Trump in a heated debate with Kamala Harris!” and promised to double their crypto.
Of course scams are in no shortage in the world of crypto, but a livestream aired early this morning (JST) from a channel with an ostensible 31.5k subscribers, pretending to be electric automobile giant Tesla, was something special.
After speaking for minutes in characteristic monotone fashion, about usual Musk-ian topics such as energy concerns surrounding crypto, praise for Donald Trump, and otherwise banal stuff about the importance of regulation, the supposed SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO declared: “What you’re about to witness is an absolutely unique event … but it will completely change your belief in cryptocurrency, and it might even change your life.”
“Right now, we will double your cryptocurrency,” the deepfake Musk stated.
The danger of deepfakes on display as video targets Musk and Trump disciples
The video, entitled “LIVE NEWS: Elon Musk joined Trump in a heated debate with Kamala Harris!” featured over 60,000 live viewers according to YouTube, but this, of course, could be due to bots.
While somewhat convincing on superficial viewing, and especially listening, close attention reveals that “Musk’s” mouth movements do not match the words he is saying, and the obvious lie that viewer crypto can be “effortlessly” doubled is a dead giveaway the video is a scam.
Still, with the current global political climate heavily polarized by mass media and individuals desperate to pay bills in failing economies, scams such as this can easily take hold when critical thinking is neglected.
Cryptopolitan investigated the site by scanning the QR code on a secure device:
At the time of writing, the “livestream” is still ongoing, and the apparent phishing site linked in the video via QR code, muskdebate.io, appears to have been taken down. The actual verified Tesla account on YouTube has over 2.6 million subscribers, as opposed to 31.5 thousand.
While fake Musk ridiculously assured viewers “this epoch-making event” is a “groundbreaking moment for the entire cryptocurrency financial market” and lauded Trump’s ostensible support of cryptocurrencies, the now 7-hour livestream somehow seems eerily believable.
The Oxford dictionary defines a “deepfake” as “a video of a person in which their face or body has been digitally altered so that they appear to be someone else, typically used maliciously or to spread false information.” It is critical crypto users be on the lookout for scams as AI-generated content becomes more and more prevalent. Use critical thinking, and remember if it is too good to be true, it’s probably fake.
