South Korean woman loses £40k in Elon Musk romance scam involving deepfake video

‘Musk even said, ‘I love you, you know that?’ when we made a video call,’ victims says

A South Korean woman lost 70m won (£40,000) to a romance scam after being duped by a deepfake video featuring Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to local media reports.

The victim, given the pseudonym Jeong Ji-sun, said it was a dream come true when she began talking to a man on Instagram claiming to be the American tech mogul.

She told South Korean broadcaster KBS that “Mr Musk” shared his pictures from work, spoke about his children and how he contacted his fans randomly.

“I experienced something like a dream last year,” she told the broadcaster. “On July 17, ‘Musk’ added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his autobiography, I doubted it at first.”

“’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,” she added.

He also raved about his meeting with South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol in April 2023 when he touted the country as an ideal place to build a Tesla gigafactory.

Her initial doubts about her new Instagram friend were eased after they had a video call and the conman she thought was the American businessman confessed his love for her. The conman, unknown to the victim at the time, was using a deepfake video of Mr Musk.

“‘Musk’ even said, ‘I love you, you know that?’ when we made a video call,” she said.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has seen stock prices drop of late (Getty)

The scammer then provided a Korean bank account to the woman and persuaded her to invest her money so she could become rich.

“‘I’m happy when my fans are getting rich because of me,’” she said the conman told her.

It was the latest of a series of scams involving the SpaceX founder whose popularity has exploded in recent years. The scammers use the billionaire’s identity to swindle money from unsuspecting people.

In 2021, a school teacher in Hampshire, UK, was conned out of her savings by a bitcoin scam promising Musk would "double her investment”. Julie Bushnell put £9,000 into a fake scheme that claimed the US billionaire entrepreneur was having a Bitcoin "giveaway".