On Wednesday morning, the X account of Tanzanian billionaire Mohammed Dewji posted a 10-second video of the bearded tycoon sitting in his home office with a piece of paper on which he had scribbled one word: $Tanzania. However, Dewji claims he had no involvement in the project and that his X account has been hacked.
The video purporting to be from Dewji is actually a deepfake: a video in which a person’s voice and body have been modified by AI to construct a false reality, typically for purposes of misinformation.
Dewji revealed the hack to a viable media outlet via WhatsApp message on Wednesday afternoon, stating that his team had previously reported the hack to X and that he remains locked out of his account.
Despite several posts hawking $Tanzania being taken down, Dewji’s account continued to promote the scam. A post promoting the cryptocurrency’s launch was shared at 2:56pm eastern time, followed by another apparent deepfake two minutes later.
The fake Dewji videos have received over 30,000 views, and the hackers have modified Dewji’s account settings to prevent other users from responding to his posts.
The Dewji case is not an isolated incident. Deepfake content led to fraud losses of over $12 billion in 2023, according to Deloitte. In this case, investors put $1.48 million into the $Tanzania token over just a few hours.
The scammers appear to be the same people who hacked the X account of former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro two weeks ago and made off with $1.3 million.
X has become a breeding ground for crypto scammers since Elon Musk took over the social media platform in 2022 and reduced content moderation efforts.
When asked for further comment, Dewji stated, “I guess I need to invest more on cybersecurity.” X is yet to respond to a request for comment, according to the media outlet.
