Fraudsters using Elon Musk's name to promote fraudulent crypto investments are common. It turns out that there are more sophisticated scammers because they even created a deepfake video of Elon Musk for his fraud campaign.
The deepfake video started appearing on several YouTube channels about a week ago. The video introduces a bogus crypto platform called BitVex that promises up to 30% return on investment every day for three months. Instead of profit, the user's crypto money is actually taken away by fraudsters.
The scammers behind BitVex say the platform was founded by Musk and developed by 'the best mathematicians from Tesla'. The video uploaded on BitVex's YouTube channel has been watched more than 90,000 times.
The scammer used the original video of Musk being interviewed by entrepreneur and TED boss Chris Anderson which was edited. At first the video looks casual, but once Musk and Anderson start talking it's clear that their voices don't match the movement of their mouths.
This deepfake video has visited Twitter and has been viewed more than 500,000 times. Musk, who is an active Twitter user, immediately commented on the video.
"Yikes. Of course not only," Musk said in his tweet, as quoted from Gizmodo, Saturday (28/5/2022).
It turns out that Elon Musk is not the only person whose name and face have been used in this scam. The scammers also created deepfake videos showing key figures in the crypto and investment world such as Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson.
Fortunately this fraudulent scheme was not very successful. Bleeping Computer, who first reported the scam, said they were only able to track deposits of $1,700 on the BitVex platform, although the amount could be estimated to be higher.