How a woman got scammed and lost $50,000 to a ‘fake’ Elon Musk she fell in love with

elon musk scam

Scams where people get cheated and lost money are common Deepfake scams are also getting common. However, someone getting conned by falling in love with a billionaire — none other than Elon Musk — isn’t really common. But that’s exactly what happened with a woman in South Korea. According to a report by Business Insider, a fake Elon Musk befriended a woman and duped her of close to $50,000 (roughly Rs 42 lakh).

The report cites an interview  the woman (who refused to divulge her identity) did with Korean broadcaster KBS. She said that it was Musk who added her on Instagram in July 2023. “Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his biography, I doubted it at first,” the woman told KBS.

However, the smooth-talking Musk impersonator sent her a proof of his identity — images of what looked like Musk’s ID card and himself at work. The "billionaire" engaged the woman with tales of Gigafactories, helicopter rides to work, and eventually the ever-present promise of "making her rich.”

The woman said that ‘Musk’ spoke about his children and how he took a helicopter to work at Tesla. "He also explained that he contacts fans randomly,” the woman said in the interview.

To add credence, the fake Musk told the woman about a meeting with South Korean president in April 2023. The president apparently told ‘Musk’ to make Tesla factories in South Korea.

The impersonator ended up doing a video call with the woman, which was in all probability a deepfake of the Tesla CEO. “‘'Musk' even said 'I love you, you know that?' when we made a video call," the woman said in the interview.

The seamster then asked the woman to transfer 70 million Korean won (roughly $50,000) to a local bank account of his Korean employee. The fake Musk told the woman that he would make her rich by investing that money.

Earlier, another fake Elon Musk had caught the attention of real Elon Musk. Back in 2022, a man in China was posting TikTok videos pretending to be Musk. Back then Musk did say that he would like to meet him if the guy was real as it was “hard to tell with deepfakes these days.”