Ezra Reguerra10 hours agoFilipino artists hacked to promote XRP scamBen&Ben, a nine-piece pop band with over 3 million YouTube followers, started livestreaming a fraudulent XRP advertisement.2256 Total views13 Total sharesListen to article 0:00NewsOwn this piece of crypto historyCollect this article as NFTJoin us on social networksSeveral Filipino musicians’ YouTube accounts have been hacked and are now promoting an XRP scam.
On July 15, several accounts from famous musicians based in the Philippines were seen promoting a deepfake video of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse predicting that XRP (XRP) might reach $4. Such schemes often direct victims to phishing websites to access their funds.
A report from local media outlet Bitpinas highlighted that YouTube pages for the local band Ben&Ben, boyband SB19 and musician Rico Blanco were all compromised.Filipino musicians’ YouTube accounts seen promoting XRP scam
Ben&Ben, a nine-piece pop band with over 3 million followers on YouTube, announced on July 15 that their account had been compromised.
On their official Facebook page, the band said their YouTube channel was hacked, and their team was working to recover the page. While the band tried to recover the page, the account livestreamed a common XRP scam.Ben&Ben account seen promoting XRP scam. Source: YouTube
A few hours later, the band announced that they had restored and recovered part of their account from the hijackers. However, the band noted that the account still streamed content by the attackers. At the time of writing, the XRP scam livestream has stopped showing.
At the same time as the Ben&Ben hack, Filipino boyband SB19 also announced that its YouTube account with 3.6 million followers had been compromised. However, the band’s management recovered the account quickly and reported the matter to the relevant authorities.
Meanwhile, musician Rico Blanco also seemed to have been a victim of the hacks. While there are no official statements from the artist yet, Redditors flagged that the musician’s account with over 700,000 followers has been compromised.
The account is currently blocked on YouTube for violating the platform’s guidelines.
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Scammers using a deepfake of Ripple’s Garlinghouse have been active on YouTube for a while now.
In December 2023, Reddit users flagged a fraudulent video of Garlinghouse asking XRP holders to send their coins to a specific address and promising to send back double the amount — a common line used by crypto fraudsters.
Redditors reported seeing the fraudulent advertisements between November and December 2023 and claimed to have already reported them to Google.
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