On September 9, 2024, during Apple’s highly publicized “Glowtime” event, a series of deceptive livestreams featuring a deepfake of CEO Tim Cook appeared on YouTube.
These videos, which promoted a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme, urged viewers to send Bitcoin, Ether, Tether, or Dogecoin to a specified wallet address with the false promise of doubling their investment.
The scam livestreams coincided with Apple’s official event, which showcased the new iPhone 16 models. One particularly misleading stream was hosted on a channel mimicking the legitimate “Apple US” account, complete with a verification tick.
Many of these videos garnered substantial viewership, with reports indicating that some attracted hundreds of thousands of views, likely bolstered by bot activity designed to create an illusion of legitimacy.
The deepfake of Cook claimed, “Once you complete your deposit, the system will automatically process it and send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited.” This type of scheme is commonly known as a “double-your-money” scam, where the scammers ultimately retain the funds sent by unsuspecting victims.
In response to the incident, YouTube’s support team acknowledged the fraudulent activity in a Sept. 9 X post, and encouraged users to report the videos through their official reporting channels. The scam livestreams have since been removed, and the associated accounts have been closed.
This is not the first time high-profile individuals and events have been targeted by deepfake-based crypto scams. In June 2024, the YouTube news channel of major Australian broadcaster Seven was hijacked to host videos of a deepfake Elon Musk Talking about crypto.
