SEOUL – A South Korean woman was persuaded to purportedly invest 70 million won (S$69,600) after seeing a deepfake video of what appeared to be chief executive of Tesla Elon Musk, according to local reports on April 23.

Ms Jeong Ji-sun, whom South Korean broadcaster KBS has agreed to refer to by a pseudonym, shared how she became a victim of a romance scam on its In-Depth 60 Minutes.

On the April 19 episode, Ms Jeong opened up about how she first started talking with the con artist, who claimed to be Mr Musk.

“I experienced something like a dream last year. On July 17 (in 2023), ‘Musk’ added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his autobiography, I doubted it at first.”

But Ms Jeong’s doubts did not last long.

“‘Musk’ sent me his ID card and a photo of him at work. In addition, ‘Musk’ talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or SpaceX. He also explained that he contacts fans randomly.”

When Ms Jeong asked the scammer what it was like when he met South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in April 2023, he answered that “Yoon talked about... ‘Let’s establish gigafactories in Seoul and Jeju’”, according to Ms Jeong.

“‘Musk’ even said, ‘I love you, you know that?’ when we made a video call.”

After seeing a video of what appeared to be Mr Musk, Ms Jeong came to believe that the scammer was who he claimed to be.

The scammer later provided a Korean bank account number, and said: “I’m happy when my fans are getting rich because of me.”

However, South Korean laws lack provisions which may help to prevent such crimes, 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.

According to a recent study conducted at Seoul-based Korea University, in a total of 280 crimes categorised between January and June of 2022, 71.4 per cent of the victims were women. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK