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Scam ran on YouTube last night – +$620k collected

10 points by _boffin_ ↗ HN
Last night, I was on YouTube and on their main page, they had a channel called "[Twitter] - Tesla" with a live stream video (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxSUtFQHI3g -- no longer active). It looks like it was this video (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwx_7XAJ3p0) that was taken over a year ago. It included a QR Code with a link to https://2023tesla.io.

It had the following:

- Doge: https://blockchair.com/dogecoin/address/DFR1qA9fqtFUthmWoN6yJoU6jJKgUBMZo6

- BTC: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/12nPNAmZmHUwqT7CXt6CEa9c9kvcFHKm8a

- ETH: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/eth/0xCCDE04BB2C95a7562deB0D74D4aC45B78C03F486

As of right now, it looks like over $620k has been scammed.

this is just an FYI

10 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] thread
paulpauper
SBF should have just done this instead. he would have still made millions (365 days/year times $1 million/day) and not been arrested. No one gives a shit about this kind of fraud, not YouTube, not the feds, not lawmakers, not exchanges. It is allowed to continue unstopped forever.
mensetmanusman
My old dad fell for this last Christmas and lost $2k. There will always be those that prey on the hope of the lost. Crypto just made it super easy to get away with.
chathnpt
I've seen these videos/live streams over the past few months. Its very effective since it looks like an official live stream. And unfortunately it seems like YouTube algorithm promotes these which gives an impression that its "official" as well.

Just another new trick from scammers. I'm always impressed at how they always seem to find new innovative ways to scam people out of money.

wara23arish
I’ve seen these pop up a bunch. They’re usually related to some recent topic (Kanye, Elon .. Chappelle)

I’ve tried reporting all of them, but they still recommend it since it’s “Live”

I never knew it was possible to see how much was scammed. that’s way more than I expected:(

_boffin_
The scam is still running.
paulpauper
Many domains. I counted a dozen today. Some .io domains. Some .net domains. Different landing pages. Some video's have 1k online, Others have 5k. This is quite a large crime syndicate.
killmoon
Again goin on 2023tesla.io

I also saw it last night as a suggested YouTube video, after the one i had watched (that was related to forex trading platforms). In the thumbnail there was an image of Elon Musk, so i clicked intrigued.

The Live streaming made me immediately suspicious: - Comments were blocked - The video (appearing much like an online meeting with Musk as one of the participants) looked old - The channel was called "[Twitter] - Tesla" - To drive traffic from the video to the scam website there was a bottom fixed overlayed fake tweet of Musk (17h older) and a QR code to the website

2023tesla.io (Cloudflare protected) went offline at about 7.00 A.M. CET with an http 500 error.

Checked again this morning it was back online… And still going.

paulpauper
whole bunch of domains, including sometimes that one.

It would seem like there must be a whole crime syndicate at work here. Different. io domains. I saw a 1.4 million channel hacked, some with 100-200k followers.

mr_trick
What I don't understand is how Youtube allows channels to be created where they clearly contain trademarked terms - in this case, Tesla. It shouldn't be hard to have a watchlist of trademarks that flags any channel creation using those terms for manual review.