'He Said I Love You': Woman Falls In Love With 'Elon Musk' & Ends Up Losing Rs 42 Lakh
Elon Musk and a woman fell in love with each other. However, instead of becoming a billionaire's wife, the woman ended up losing a huge amount of money, around $50,000 (approximately Rs 42 lakh). The reason? The person she thought was Elon Musk turned out to be a skilled con artist.
Elon Musk and a woman fell in love with each other. However, instead of becoming a billionaire's wife, the woman ended up losing a huge amount of money, around $50,000 (approximately Rs 42 lakh). The reason? The person she thought was Elon Musk turned out to be a skilled con artist.
Fake Musk showed ID cards, said 'I love you'
It all started in July 2022 when a woman from South Korea got a friend request on Instagram from Elon Musk.
"Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his biography, I doubted it at first," the woman said in an interview with South Korean broadcaster KBS.
But when the person sent photos of Musk's ID and himself at work, she started to believe it was really him.
"'Musk' talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or Space X," she told KBS. "He also explained that he contacts fans randomly."
The fake Musk even shared details about a meeting the real Musk had with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in April 2023.
Even when they switched from texting to video calls, the woman still couldn't tell what was real.
"'Musk' even said 'I love you, you know that?' when we made a video call," the woman said, referring to a likely deepfake video call with the scammer pretending to be Musk.
Not the first time someone impersonated Musk
Eventually, the scammer persuaded her to transfer 70 million Korean won, which is about $50,000, to a bank account he claimed belonged to one of his Korean employees.
The person posing as Musk promised to make the woman wealthy by investing her money.
This isn¡¯t the first time someone has tried to impersonate Musk.
In China, there's a guy named Yilong Ma who looks a lot like Musk and has been posting videos on TikTok.
Musk himself noticed these videos and wondered if Ma was actually real.
"I'd like to meet this guy (if he is real). Hard to tell with deepfakes these days," Musk said about Ma in a post in May 2022.
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