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Several renowned Filipino artists, including SB19 and Ben&Ben, had their YouTube accounts hacked to promote an XRP scam using a deepfake of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
YouTube Accounts Hijacked for Crypto Scam
A number of well-known Filipino musicians' accounts began advertising a deepfake video of Brad Garlinghouse speculating that XRP would hit $4 on July 15. Phishing websites are a common entry point for victims of such schemes.
Local artists, such as boyband SB19 and band Ben&Ben, had their YouTube accounts hacked, according to a story from Bitpinas (via Cointelegraph), a local media outlet.
SB19 and Ben&Ben Targeted by Hackers
On July 15, the nine-piece pop band Ben&Ben revealed that their account had been hacked. The band has more than three million YouTube followers.
The band announced the hacking of their YouTube channel and the recovery of the page on their official Facebook page. The account streamed a typical XRP fraud as the band attempted to restore the page.
The band made an announcement a few hours later, saying that they had partially regained their account from the hijackers and restored it. The group did point out that the account continued to stream the intruders' content, though. The XRP fraud broadcast has abruptly ended as of this writing.
In a similar vein to the Ben&Ben breach, the Filipino boyband SB19 also revealed that someone had gained unauthorized access to their 3.6 million YouTube followers. Still, the band's brass wasted no time getting the account back up and running and notifying the proper authorities.
Brad Garlinghouse Deepfake Used in XRP Scam
Scammers on YouTube have been utilizing a deepfake of Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple's CEO, for some time now.
A video posing as Garlinghouse requesting that XRP holders transmit their money to a certain address and promising to return twice the amount was detected by Reddit users in December 2023. This is a typical tactic used by crypto fraudsters.
Between November and December 2023, Redditors claimed to have reported the bogus advertisements to Google after seeing them.
