Don’t be fooled by old scams!
As cryptocurrencies become increasingly mainstream, along with technological innovation and development, many online fraud methods have inevitably emerged. In addition to common wallet and on-chain fraud, there is also a type of cryptocurrency fraud that uses "celebrity images" , is also a technique that investors must be careful to guard against.
Recently, this type of fraud has reappeared on YouTube, a well-known audio and video platform, and criminals have also evolved, using AI-generated Deepfake technology to directly forge videos and broadcast them live on YouTube.
"Fake Musk" YouTube live broadcast scams cryptocurrency
This YouTube live broadcast lasted for five hours. The fraudsters used the image of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a celebrity in the currency circle, who attended Tesla events to speak, and used artificial intelligence to generate some images and sounds. , promoting cryptocurrency airdrop events to viewers.
In this live video titled "Tesla Unveils a Masterpiece: The Tesla That Will Change the Automotive Industry Forever", the fake Musk provides a QRCode and tells the audience to just transfer the cryptocurrency to a suspicious website, there will be free cryptocurrency in return.
Of course, once the user transfers funds to the website, it is basically transferred directly to the account of the fraud group.
This fake live broadcast attracted more than 30,000 viewers to watch online at the same time in a short period of time, and even topped the YouTube Live Now recommendation list. Criminals are likely to use robots to expand viewing data, making it easier for investors to be deceived.
The authenticated account is no longer trustworthy
In addition, a key point in this fraud incident is that the fake Tesla (Tesla) official live broadcast account used an account with the YouTube official artist channel verification badge.
The name of the account is @elon.teslastream. It is likely that hackers stole other accounts with authentication tags and then changed their names to disguise them. The criminals also deliberately purchased a considerable number of subscribers to make the channel look more authentic. This is not only This increases the credibility of the scam and may also make viewers more susceptible to being deceived.
Although the platform banned the channel and deleted the fraudulent videos soon after, the frequent occurrence of such incidents shows that there is still a lot of room for improvement on the YouTube platform in terms of account security and content review.
In recent months, similar Deepfake scams have continued unabated, and each time the scammers used a different Musk company account to broadcast live.
Increase vigilance to protect assets
In addition to audio-visual deepfake scams, more than 35 scams impersonating SpaceX accounts have occurred in June this year. These accounts used Starship launches before and after the launch to carry out similar scams on the pretext of "commemorating the launch airdrop."
These incidents remind us to be more vigilant when conducting any transactions on the Internet. Please confirm whether the source of the information is trustworthy. Official accounts may also be hacked and are not the only criterion.
Additionally, investors should be skeptical of any campaign that claims to make a quick profit or offer free money, as such campaigns are often scams.