Several YouTube accounts belonging to popular Filipino musicians, including the renowned pop band Ben&Ben, were recently hacked to promote a fraudulent XRP advertisement.

On July 15, numerous YouTube accounts of well-known Filipino musicians were observed livestreaming a deepfake video featuring Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, falsely predicting that XRP could reach $4. Such scams often direct victims to phishing websites to steal their funds.

A report from the local media outlet Bitpinas revealed that YouTube channels for Ben&Ben, boyband SB19, and musician Rico Blanco were compromised in this attack.

Ben&Ben’s YouTube Account Hack

Ben&Ben, a nine-member pop band with over 3 million YouTube followers, announced on July 15 that their account had been hacked. On their official Facebook page, the band stated that their YouTube channel was compromised and that their team was working diligently to regain control. While attempting to recover their account, the compromised channel livestreamed an XRP scam video.

Ben&Ben account seen promoting XRP scam. Source: YouTube

Within a few hours, the band announced partial recovery of their account from the hackers. However, they noted that the account was still streaming content from the attackers. At the time of writing, the XRP scam livestream has ceased.

SB19 and Rico Blanco Also Targeted

Around the same time, Filipino boyband SB19 also reported that their YouTube account, with 3.6 million followers, had been hacked. The band’s management swiftly recovered the account and reported the incident to the authorities.

Musician Rico Blanco’s account, with over 700,000 followers, also appeared to be a victim of the hack. Although no official statement has been released by the artist, Reddit users flagged that his account was compromised and subsequently blocked on YouTube for violating the platform’s guidelines.

Deepfake XRP Scam on YouTube

Scammers have been using deepfake technology to impersonate Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, in fraudulent videos on YouTube for some time. In December 2023, Reddit users identified a video where a deepfake Garlinghouse urged XRP holders to send their coins to a specific address with the false promise of receiving double the amount in return—an often-used tactic by crypto fraudsters.

These fraudulent advertisements were reported to have been seen between November and December 2023, and users claimed to have reported them to Google.

Source: Cointelegraph