Man loses £3,250 after falling victim to deep fake Elon Musk scam on Facebook

A Huddersfield antheral has warned others aft losing thousands owed to an elaborate heavy fake Elon Musk scam.

John Cairns, 61, mislaid £3,250 aft seeing a convincing video connected Facebook purporting to beryllium Musk, the world’s richest man, advising radical to put £250 successful a caller AI trading platform.

Mr Cairns had seen the advert successful 2023 and had decided to put immoderate of the wealth helium had received from selling his precocious father’s location to his sister.

After providing his interaction details, Mr Cairns spoke connected the phone to an ‘account manager’ who explained however everything worked and told him to download MetaTrader 5, a morganatic trading platform, onto his phone, on with the AnyDesk app, which gives 3rd parties distant entree to your device.

The father-of-two was past persuaded to transportation wealth to beryllium that helium could easy retreat it.

‘This was each caller to me, I had the wealth determination truthful I conscionable went for it and made a outgo of £250 into the account. Making the minimum investment, I thought ‘What was the harm?’ Mr Cairns said.

He added: ‘The ‘account manager’ advised maine done immoderate unrecorded trading successful currencies and, by the extremity of that archetypal conversation, helium told maine that I had made a £82 profit.

‘This carried connected for a portion and successful the right-hand country of the screen, I could spot what nett I was making. He said if I wanted to marque much I should put more.

‘So, I transferred a further £1,490 and could spot the nett increasing rapidly. When helium asked maine to put a 3rd time, I asked him if I could marque a withdrawal, conscionable to fulfill myself that I could.’

After withdrawing astir £82 to trial the method, helium was convinced the strategy was genuine, truthful helium deposited different £1,510.

But erstwhile Mr Cairns began to marque much money, the ‘account manager’ became pushier and refused to fto him retreat his profits.

‘When my investments had grown to astir $5,000, I had asked if I could retreat his archetypal concern and conscionable transportation connected utilizing the nett I had made. He turned astir and said that would beryllium a dilatory mode to invest, helium wanted maine to get into gold, Tesla, Netflix, Starbucks etc, to summation my investment. By doing what I wanted to bash it would instrumentality maine excessively agelong to get wherever I wanted to be,’ helium said.

When Mr Cairns met his girl for luncheon aft making the investments, helium told her helium had astir $10,000 successful his relationship – which made her sceptical.

‘She Googled the institution sanction and saw the reviews astir them not paying their customers back, truthful that acceptable disconnected alarm bells for me,’ Mr Cairns said.

After that Mr Cairns wanted to halt instantly and adjacent his relationship to get his wealth backmost but was ‘palmed off’, yet deciding to instrumentality the loss.

Mr Cairns has present enlisted the assistance of National Fraud Helpline solicitors to effort to retrieve his wealth from banks Santander and Chase, who they accidental person a work of attraction to support their customers from fraud.

Fiona Bresnen, a lawyer astatine National Fraud Helpline solicitors, said: ‘With the advancement of AI we are sadly seeing much of these types of deep-fake scams utilizing well-known figures.

‘The Elon Musk video is incredibly convincing and we recognize that thousands of radical person fallen unfortunate to this peculiar scam. It is becoming progressively hard for anyone to archer what investments are legitimate. When it comes to concern opportunities our archetypal portion of proposal is always, if thing looks excessively bully to beryllium existent it astir apt is.’

Mr Cairns, who has a two-word informing for radical who spot these adverts, said: ‘I would alternatively usage the wealth investing done due channels and with due investigation, and person thing bully to discontinue with.

‘I conscionable privation to pass radical against clicking links attached to faked Facebook videos with large planetary figures, including Richard Branson and Sir Keir Starmer, seemingly promoting concern schemes.

‘Just don’t – wholly disregard it. It’s a shame due to the fact that determination are radical who mightiness person a wee spot of wealth and privation to spot if they tin bash amended for themselves. In these times determination are a batch of families retired determination who volition effort thing to effort and marque a decent beingness for themselves and their family.’

‘I was bedewed down the ears doing this, and I conscionable wanted to dip my digit successful the h2o with these investments and spot however it would go. It ended up being a large dip successful the water.’

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