Metropolis Desk-
After viewing a deepfake video purporting to show Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, a Korean woman was convinced to pay 70 million won ($50,770), local news stated on Tuesday.
KBS’s “In-Depth 60 Minutes” featured Jeong Ji-sun, who they have consented to refer to under a pseudonym, discussing how she fell for a romantic scam. Jeong talked candidly on the April 19 episode about how she first communicated with the scam man posing as Musk.
“Last year, I had a dream-like experience. Musk friended me on Instagram on July 17 of last year. Initially, I wasn’t sure about Musk, but after reading his book, I became a big fan.”
Musk forwarded me a picture of himself at work and his ID card. Musk also discussed flying in a helicopter to work at SpaceX or Tesla as well as his kids. He added that he gets in touch with fans at random.”
The con artist replied, “Yoon talked about ‘Let’s establish Gigafactories in Seoul and Jeju,'” when Jeong asked him about his encounter with President Yoon Suk Yeol in April of last year.
“Musk even said ‘I love you, you know that?’ when we made a video call.” Jeong began to think that this man was Musk after watching a video of someone who looked like Musk.
Following that, the con artist revealed the number of a Korean bank account while claiming, “I’m happy when my fans are getting rich because of me.”
He indicated that one of his Korean staff members was the owner of the account. In the end, she transferred 70 million won into his account, believing he would handle the investing. The show claims that this is a standard AI romance scam.
She spoke with a con artist who employed a technique known as “pig butchering,” the producer said. A confidence trick and investment fraud known as a “pig butchering skill” involves progressively convincing the victim to contribute more money to an apparently wise investment before the con artist vanishes.
Total amounts lost to romance scams, also known as confidence scams, are on the rise in Korea — from 370 million won in 2020 to 5.51 billion won in 2023.
However, Korean law lacks some provisions that can help prevent such crime, according to the show.
The show pointed out that many of the romance scams take the form of the victim making a payment via credit on fake websites set up by the criminal, which is not specified as a situation in which payment can be suspended under the Special Act on the Prevention of Loss Caused by Telecommunications-based Financial Fraud and Refund for Loss.
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 percent of the victims were women.
Source- The Korean Herald
