Romance Scam: Woman from Korea loses $50,770 in Elon Musk deepfake scam
Scammer convinced woman to invest 70 million won using photo of CEO of Tesla
Jeong Ji-sun is the pseudonym of a woman who shared how she became a victim of a romance scam. Jeong talks about how she started chatting on Instagram with a man who claimed to be Elon Musk.
The woman says she began to believe she was talking to the real Elon Musk after the man sent her AI-generated photos of what looked like Elon Musk’s ID card and images of him at work.
“Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his biography, I doubted it at first,” Ji-sun says.
“Musk sent me his ID card and a photo of him at work. In addition, Musk talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or SpaceX. He also explained that he contacts fans randomly.”
“Musk even said ‘I love you, you know that?’ when we made a video call.” After seeing a video of what appeared to be Musk, Jeong came to believe that this man was Musk.
Afterward, the scammer gave a Korean bank account number, saying, “I’m happy when my fans are getting rich because of me.”
He said the account was held by one of his Korean employees. She ended up depositing a total of 70 million won into his account, thinking that he would invest it for her.
