Grieving man scammed out of thousands by fraudsters using deepfake of Elon Musk
A man grieving after the death of his father was scammed out of part of his inheritance by fraudsters using a deepfake video of Elon Musk.
John Cairns, 61, said he was “embarrassed” at losing £3,250 after seeing the convincing video on Facebook purporting to be the Musk, the world’s richest man, advising people to invest £250 in a new AI trading platform.
He has now enlisted the help of National Fraud Helpline solicitors to try to recover his money from banks Santander and Chase.
The scam unfolded in 2023, when he decided to invest part of the money from the sale of his share of his late father’s house.
After clicking on the advert and providing his details, Mr Cairns was contacted by an “account manager” who explained how the investments would work. He was advised to download MetaTrader 5, a legitimate trading platform, onto his phone, along with the AnyDesk app, which gives third parties remote access to your device.
“The ‘account manager’ said I needed to download everything so he could see what I was seeing on my platform and explain what profit I was making and what to buy and sell,” said Mr Cairns, a senior contract manager for a cleaning company. He ended up making three “investments” with the help of the “account manager” which quickly appeared to turn a profit, through live trading in currencies.
At one point he was able to withdraw $100, convincing him the scheme was genuine.
However his daughter was sceptical when he later told her he had $10,000 in his account after just a couple of months. She looked up the company and discovered reviews about them not paying their customers back. He made attempts to get his money back, but kept getting fobbed off, until he finally gave up.
Mr Cairns warned people against clicking links attached to faked Facebook videos with figures like Richard Branson and Sir Keir Starmer, apparently promoting investment schemes. “Just don’t - completely ignore it,” he said.