South Korean Woman Falls In Love With ''Fake'' Elon Musk, Loses Rs 41 Lakh

A woman in South Korea was tricked into losing over $50,000 (Rs 41 lakh) following a scam involving Tesla CEO Elon Musk. According to the Independent, the woman identified as Jeong Ji-sun, believed she was interacting with billionaire Elon Musk on Instagram. In reality, it was just a deepfake video. 

The woman opened up about how she first started talking with the con artist, who claimed to be Musk.

"I experienced something like a dream last year. On July 17 last year, Musk added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his biography, I doubted it at first," the woman told South Korean broadcaster KBS.

However, her doubts disappeared after ''Mr Musk” shared his pictures from work, spoke about his children and told her how he contacted his fans randomly. The fake Musk also told her about a meeting with the South Korean president in April 2023. 

The scammer then interacted with her on a video call using a deepfake video of Elon Musk. 

''Musk' even said, 'I love you, you know that?' when we made a video call,'' the woman said. 

She said the scammer eventually convinced her to transfer 70 million Korean won, or $50,000, to a bank account he said belonged to one of his Korean employees. The person behind the fake Musk claimed he would make the woman rich by investing her money, she told KBS.

He said: ''I'm happy when my fans are getting rich because of me.''

It was later revealed that Jeong had fallen prey to an elaborate AI scam, resulting in her financial loss. However, South Korean laws lack provisions which may help to prevent such crimes.

According to a recent study conducted at Seoul-based Korea University, in a total of 280 crimes categorized between January and June of 2022, 71.4 per cent of the victims were women.