As per local media reports, a south Korean woman lost 70m won (£40,000) to a romance scam after being duped by a deepfake video featuring Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The Tale of Jeong Ji-sun and the Fake Musk
The victim, Jeong Ji-sun(pseudonym), said that for her it was a dream come true when she began talking to a man on Instagram who claimed himself to be the American tech mogul.
She further said that the tech mogul claimed himself to be “Mr Musk” and he shared his pictures from work, spoke about his children and how he contacted his fans randomly.
She told a broadcaster “I experienced something like a dream last year”.
“On July 17, ‘Musk’ added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his autobiography, I doubted it at first.”
She added that he sent her his ID card and a photo of him at work.
In addition to this, ‘Musk’ talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or SpaceX. She told that he explained that he contacts his fans randomly.
He further talked with her about his meeting with the South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol in April 2023 when he touted the country as an ideal place to build a Tesla gigafactory.
Her initial doubts about him and his Instagram account was eased after they had a video call with him and later the American businessman confessed his love for her.
At this time, the conman was using a deepfake video of Mr Musk.
She said during video phone ‘Musk’ even said, ‘I love you; you know that?’
Later the scammer provided a Korean bank account to the woman and coaxed her to invest her money in the company so that she could become rich.
The conman said that “‘I’m happy when my fans are getting rich because of me”.
The Rise of Scammers Impersonating Elon Musk
In recent years, there has been an explosion in the popularity of SpaceX founder. In order to swindle money from unsuspecting people, the scammers use his identity.
In a similar incident in 2021, a schoolteacher in Hampshire, UK, was conned out of her savings by a bitcoin scam promising Musk would “double her investment”.
After this, Julie Bushnell put £9,000 into a fake scheme that claimed the US billionaire entrepreneur was having a Bitcoin “giveaway”.
