Korean woman fell in love with fake Ilon Musk - he talked about gigafactories and took $50k from her for "investment"

A resident of South Korea says that she met "Musk" through Instagram, where he allegedly selectively communicates with fans.

"On July 17th of last year, Musk added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I became a big fan of his after reading his biography, at first I doubted if it was real," the woman told reporters from the Korean TV company KBS (via Business Insider).

Later, the fake Elon began to tell her about working at Tesla and even sent her photos from his workplace and an identity card, so the woman no longer doubted that she was lucky to be chosen.

"Musk talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or Space X," she told KBS.

The scammer also told her details of "his" meeting with South Korean President Yun Suk Yol in April 2023. There he allegedly agreed on building Tesla factories in Seoul and Jeju.

Interestingly, the woman was able to talk to the fake Musk via video - most likely the scammer used deepfake.

"During the video call, Musk even said: 'I love you, you know that?'", the woman adds.

In the end, the fake Musk asked her to transfer 70 million Korean won, or 50,000 dollars, to his bank account (which supposedly belonged to one of his Korean employees) - and promised to make her rich by investing this money "where it's needed."

In reality, "romantic fraud" is quite a common trend. Only in the US in 2022, fake lovers lured $1.3 billion from their victims. As for Musk clones, they are not the first to become known to the public — a Chinese billionaire lookalike named Ilong Ma became popular on TikTok and even attracted the attention of the real Elon.

"I would like to meet this guy (if he's real). Now, it's very difficult to understand this, considering deepfake technologies," Musk wrote in a note X in May 2022.