Elon Musk deep fakes promote new cryptocurrency scam

Cryptocurrency scammers are utilizing deep faux movies of Elon Musk and different outstanding cryptocurrency advocates to advertise a BitVex buying and selling platform rip-off that steals deposited foreign money.

This faux BitVex cryptocurrency buying and selling platform claims to be owned by Elon Musk, who created the positioning to permit everybody to earn as much as 30% returns on their crypto deposits.

This rip-off marketing campaign began earlier this month with menace actors creating or hacking current YouTube accounts to host deep faux movies of Elon Musk, Cathie Wooden, Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Saylor, and Charles Hoskinson.

These movies are authentic interviews modified with deep faux know-how to make use of the particular person’s voice in a script offered by the menace actors.

An instance of one of many rip-off movies could be seen beneath, the place Elon promotes the brand new rip-off website and says he invested $50 million into the platform.

Nevertheless, for those who look rigorously, you will note that the deep faux synchronizes the particular person’s speaking to the menace actor’s script, which is so foolish as to be comical.

How do we all know it is a rip-off?

Whereas it’s apparent that the interviews have been altered to simulate Elon Musk’s voice to advertise the BitVex buying and selling platform, quite a few different clues present that it is a rip-off.

Many YouTube channels selling this buying and selling platform have been hacked to all of a sudden present YouTube movies or YouTube Shorts that promote the BitVex buying and selling website.

For instance, a YouTube channel that displayed gaming movies in Arabic all of a sudden started exhibiting a collection of YouTube Shorts that promoted the BitVex rip-off. As well as, BleepingComputer has discovered dozens of different YouTube channels hijacked equally to advertise this rip-off.

When you go to the BitVex buying and selling website itself, it turns into extra obvious that it is a rip-off.

For instance, the positioning claims that Elon Musk is the CEO of the buying and selling platform and comprises endorsements from Ark Make investments’s Cathie Wooden and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.

To make use of the BitVex platform, customers should register an account at bitvex[.]org or bitvex[.]web to entry the funding platform.

When you log in, the positioning will show a dashboard the place you may deposit varied cryptocurrencies, choose an funding plan, or withdraw your earnings.

Like virtually all cryptocurrency scams, the dashboard will show latest withdrawals of varied cryptocurrencies to make the positioning seem authentic, as proven beneath.

Nevertheless, these withdrawals are created via JavaScript, randomly choosing considered one of 5 totally different cryptocurrencies (Cardano, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ripple, or Binance Coin) and randomly producing withdrawal quantities. These faux withdrawals are modified randomly on every web page refresh.

Fortunately, the rip-off doesn’t seem too profitable, with solely $1,700 deposits to the rip-off’s cryptocurrency addresses seen by BleepingComputer. Nevertheless, these addresses are doubtless rotated, so they might have stolen extra for the reason that rip-off launched.

A few of the cryptocurrency addresses used on this rip-off are listed beneath:

• Bitcoin – 16Ge7LhzpxHTSQLptSe4sptseVwDYU6gpN (Earned $1,280.82)
• Bitcoin Money – qpkrguy6ralp0pux390fr7pz2ugpq90s3uach9m42j
• Ethereum – 0x1087d3584AB80df8d14B4D7d5A2091C3Bb55eF2F
• Tether – TRh8zMBdcEEZdPBC6xkBmkd5SrpkRQEjWK 
• Dogecoin – DDu1kVvtd9bc4jQ1uY7EUBBddmzTgjbsav
• Polkadot – 16keizqPvkS3uQ4Cad9vPNoQhbstKNqJtTG1Uk8i6mY8JNTL

Whereas it might be exhausting to consider that folks would fall for these scams, faux cryptocurrency giveaways and funding schemes are recognized to generate tens of millions of {dollars} for menace actors.

In January 2021, a faux Elon Musk crypto giveaway rip-off earned $580k in only one week.

Much more not too long ago, an Ark Make investments-themed rip-off promoted on YouTube stole $1.3 million by simply re-streaming an edited model of an outdated reside panel dialogue on cryptocurrency with Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Cathie Wooden of Ark Make investments.

These scams have gotten so pervasive and worthwhile that the FTC launched a report warning that $80 million has been misplaced to cryptocurrency funding scams since October 2020.

Due to this fact, it’s important to acknowledge that just about each crypto giveaway website is a rip-off, particularly these allegedly from Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Ark Make investments, and Gemini that promise large returns.

When you see emails, tweets, movies, or different messages on social media selling these kinds of giveaways, keep in mind that any cryptocurrency you ship is not going to produce something in return.