YouTube Restores Access After Crypto Scammers Hijack Ranveer Allahbadia's Channel to Trick Viewers

YouTube has also recovered the influencer's videos that were deleted by the crypto scammers after his account was compromised.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 27 September 2024 17:32 IST

YouTube Restores Access After Crypto Scammers Hijack Ranveer Allahbadia's Channel to Trick Viewers

Photo Credit: X/ @BeerBicepsGuy

Neither YouTube nor its parent Google has commented on the repeated violations of its security

Highlights

Crypto scammers are using increasingly sophisticated tactics
These scammers target accounts with large subscriber base
Deepfakes of prominent figures are used to push fraud crypto schemes

Two YouTube channels of content creator Ranveer Allahbadia (also known as BeerBiceps) were hacked by crypto fraud-promoting miscreants. Allahbadia hosts interactive sessions with Indian celebrities, spiritual leaders, and politicians, with a collective subscriber base of over 12 million. Following the account breach, both of his channels were inaccessible to him, according to the creator. Meanwhile, the cybercriminals replaced related logos and images with those of Elon Musk and Tesla, and deleted all of the videos that were published on the channels. The scammers soon began to promote a crypto fraud scheme as well, using Allahbadia's account.

YouTube has since restored access to Allahbadia's channels following the breach. In the meanwhile, the hackers managed to display crypto schemes to entice viewers with promises of 200 percent returns. The hacker soon started a livestream on Allahbadia's YouTube channels, featuring photos of Musk and Donald Trump. A QR code was displayed on screen, which when scanned, redirected users to a fake Tesla-inspired website. This website also featured a giveaway worth $100 million (roughly Rs. 836 million) to the participants, a report by Crypto.news said.

Crypto scammers are using more sophisticated methods to take advantage of unwitting users, FBI had said in a recent report. In this incident as well, the hacker displayed a calculator that let users check how much will they receive in return if they invested a certain amount in what appeared to be a donation for Trump's presidential campaign.

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“We welcome you to the official event from Elon Musk and Trump, this event was created to popularise cryptocurrency, to participate you need to send cryptocurrency to any wallet (BTC, ETH, DOGE, SOL) you see on the site, we will multiply the amount sent by two and return it to your wallet,” read a message displayed on the fake site created by hackers.

Subscribers noticed the suspicious activities on Allahbadia's channels and started posting about it on X (formerly Twitter).

As per the report by Crypto.news, the streams of one of Allabadia's hacked channels had exceeded the mark of 149,000 at one point – indicating that multiple people could have risked being scammed.

North Korean Hackers Intensifying Attacks on Crypto Sector, FBI Warns

This is not the first time that such an incident has happened. Earlier this month, YouTube was spammed with deep fake videos of Apple CEO Tim Cook, promoting a crypto fraud scheme.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Crypto Hack, YouTube, Ranveer Allahbadia, BeerBiceps

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More