There are gutsy scams, after which there’s this: At this very second, a Bitcoin scammer is internet hosting a pretend press convention livestream on YouTube presupposed to be a shock collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and Tesla. It’s utterly pretend, however it’s truly type of convincing.
In case you missed it:
The livestream is titled “LIVE: Unveiling Mercedes-Benz & Tesla Collaboration Model – A car that changes everything.” It makes use of outdated footage from Tesla’s 2022 shareholder assembly, overlaid with a QR code that takes you to a Bitcoin rip-off website, and a pretend tweet constructed to seem like it got here from Elon’s official account saying “Your life will change within minutes if you scan the QR code. That’s not a joke.” (The tweet doesn’t seem anyplace on Elon’s Twitter feed.)
Jalopnik author Lawrence Hodge discovered this video whereas scrolling YouTube. We instantly reached out to a Mercedes-Benz consultant, who confirmed that the video is a pretend. If you look carefully, the YouTube channel internet hosting the pretend livestream is named “@mercedesbenz180,” however with 160,000 indicated subscribers and an official-looking brand and show title, it’s simple to see how somebody would possibly get bamboozled by it.
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Honestly, it took the Jalopnik employees a second to determine that this was a fraud. The livestream seems actual sufficient, with three paragraphs of boilerplate from Mercedes-Benz within the video description and a subscriber-only chat bar. To somebody who doesn’t know the automobile business very properly, it may not appear to loopy for Mercedes-Benz and Tesla to be partnering on a brand new car.
But it’s all only a rip-off. The QR code takes you to a shady-looking website with the URL “muskevent.net,” which pops up buttons to purchase Bitcoin or Etherium cryptocurrencies. I didn’t probe any additional than that, as a result of I worth my digital security.
This, after all, will not be a brand new kind of rip-off. Bitcoin hustlers have been utilizing Elon Musk’s title and picture for years, hoping to entice naive followers of Musk and Tesla to ship their hard-earned cash to shady web sites, by no means to be returned. Not every week goes by with no pretend Musk tweet purporting to present you life-changing wealth in case you’re sensible sufficient to put money into as we speak’s cryptocurrency flash-sale.
And the issue has been rampant on YouTube as properly. Here’s a BBC report from 2022 the place reporters have been capable of finding dozens of fraudster YouTube livestreams over simply 4 days of looking, all of them repurposing professional, official Musk footage in hopes of creating a convincing-looking stream to rip-off unsuspecting viewers. The BBC report discovered that only one such scammer was capable of make almost $250,000 in only one week of internet hosting pretend YouTube streams, and analysts estimate that the Bitcoin rip-off business pulls in almost $100 million a 12 months. But that is the primary occasion we’ve seen the place a scammer presents a pretend collaboration between Musk/Tesla and a serious established automaker like Mercedes-Benz.
Perhaps probably the most lifelike facet of this rip-off livestream press convention is the awkwardness of all of it. In the ten minutes that I’ve been watching, I’ve seen fawning Musk superfans ask about constructing a base on Mars and sincerely thank Elon for the cash they’ve made buying and selling Tesla inventory. Elon will not be a gifted public speaker, and whereas the 2022 footage has nothing to do with Mercedes-Benz, an off-the-cuff viewer would possibly assume they’ve simply tuned into the flawed a part of the livestream and missed the large information.
Jalopnik has reached out to Mercedes-Benz for official touch upon the matter. We additionally tagged Elon Musk on Twitter to see what he has to say about it — as a result of, as you most likely know by now, Tesla doesn’t have a communications division, and thus, there’s no person on the firm we will contact to ask about this.
Update: Of course, as a result of the rip-off web is simply scams all the way in which down, Jalopnik got a Bitcoin scammer in the replies to our personal tweet for this text.
Source: jalopnik.com