Tens of thousands of viewers watched a fake Apple crypto scam on YouTube

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Tens of thousands of people were watching a live stream of an interview with Tim Cook that was apparently being used to attract attention to a coin scam.

You would have seen a lot of telltale signs of the scam if you had seen it before. The fake live stream filled its title and description with Apple words to get the attention of people. It was filled with strange messages that were linked to a shady site.

There were a lot of signs that the stream was not real. There was an Apple event live. CNN conducted an interview with Tim Cook in the year 2018, and it was shown on the screen. The CNN Money logo was covered by the streamer, who added bold text reading "URGENT NEWS" at the bottom of the screen. The URL didn't have anything to do with Apple if you clicked on it. It's possible that the channel was hijacked by bad actors and used to host the stream.

A request for comment was not responded to. The stream was taken down for violating the terms of service.

The fake live stream was happening at a time when Apple is under a lot of scrutiny. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is currently being interviewed at the Code conference, which is taking place tonight. The misleading stream seemed to be an attempt to trick people who are not aware that Apple is having a big day.

I found this stream because it was recommended on my website, and I have been watching Apple videos all day. When I first watched the fake stream, there were around 16K viewers, but before I published this story, that count was over 70K.

There was a live stream on a channel that claimed to be from Apple Inc. The stream was supposed to be an event with Cook and Musk about Apple and the metaverse, but instead it was an interview with Musk and Block leader Jack Dorsey. It had a stream that reached over 10,000 viewers and was linked to a site that looked like a virtual currency. It has been taken away.

The live streams have been taken down by YouTube.