Elon Musk-based crypto scams drop on YouTube

There’s an old adage that says that if something looks too good to be true, it rarely is. And yet this isn’t stopping people from signing up to get scammed out of their hard-earned coins because Elon Musk is apparently promising to double their investment.

Security researcher Dr Johannes B Ullrich, dean of research at the SANS Technology Institute found a series of videos circulating on YouTube over the weekend, published by an account called SpaceXMission — which is, of course, not at all an official SpaceX account, nor is it any way linked to Elon Musk.

The videos purport to offer a livestream from Musk himself and updates on ongoing SpaceX missions. During the video, a tweet is shown — claiming to be from Musk — alongside a QR code. The tweet says: “Your life will change within minutes if you scan the QR code. That’s not a joke.”

The idea, says Dr Ullrich, is an old one. The scam promises that if you donate coins, you’ll get a “return” on your apparent investment.

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According to the bitcoin address attached to the scam, the scammers have already made over US$28,000 from 12 victims at the time the scam was reported, on 15 January. Another related website shows a ledger — apparently false — of payments going into and out of the account.

“I am amazed that people still fall for these straightforward, well-known, and apparent scams,” Dr Ullrich said when he reported the scams. “But crypto coin users may represent a self-selecting target group. YouTube appears to have already taken down some of the accounts associated with this scam, but there appear to be new videos and possibly accounts popping up.

“The actual ‘mystery’ is the origin of the ‘SpaceXMission’ account,” he said. “I suspect that it may have been used in the past for other spam and scams. But it could be an abandoned account later stolen or taken over.”

The account appears to have been created in 2008, and currently has more than 2 million subscribers.

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.