The YouTube news channel of a major Australian broadcaster, the Seven Network, was hijacked by crypto scammers — showing videos of a deep fake Elon Musk talking about crypto.

7News’ YouTube channel was rebranded to appear as automaker Tesla, showing an artificial intelligence-generated fake of the firm’s CEO saying he’s giving away crypto.

The AI-faked Musks were touting a common “double-your-money” scam — promising to send back double the amount of any crypto sent to an address.

About 150,000 in total were viewing three livestreams showing the fake Musk on the 7News channel at the time of writing. It’s unknown how many viewers are bots in a bid to boost viewership numbers.

Links to the 7News YouTube channel were broken, but the hijacked channel still showed the news organization’s verification tick.

A Seven spokesperson told The Sydney Morning Herald that the company was aware some of its YouTube channels were not appearing as normal.

“Seven is investigating and working with YouTube to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.

YouTube did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

A website shared by the scammers asks for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGE), with the listed addresses holding just over $11,000 in total between them.

Related: Meta loses bid to wriggle out of billionaire’s crypto scam ad lawsuit

Musk is a popular public figure for scammers to fake and use in crypto scams.

Earlier this month, more than 35 YouTube livestreams depicted fake Musks in similar double-your-money scams, which were all spun up to coincide with SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch.

Hong Kong’s securities regulator closed down a firm sporting AI-faked videos of Musk on its social media accounts and website, which claimed he developed the technology for its supposed AI crypto trading service.

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