On January 24th, information about the TeslaX project was disseminated on social media. According to a post published by the Facebook page Alina Benderuk, every citizen of Georgia can get a stable income, while Elon Musk will pay a monthly salary to every applicant registered on the platform. The post is accompanied by a quote attributed to Elon Musk: “Now all residents of Georgia can receive stable dividends from the TeslaX project.”
The website that calls for Facebook users to sign up for the TeslaX on behalf of Elon Musk bears signs of fraud. The quote ascribed to Elon Musk is fabricated, and information about the project cannot be found on the official website of Tesla. In addition, the identity of the person who is happy to invest in TeslaX is fake and is using another person’s photos.
The quote attributed to Elon Musk is fabricated, and no identical or similar content can be found in open sources, either in Russian or English. When searching for “Tesla x project” in Google, the search engine suggests the electric car Tesla Model X, the presentation of which took place in September 2015. It should be noted that information about TeslaX, the alleged project that encourages customers to invest, is not found on the official website of Tesla.
In a post published by Alina Benderuk, which links to a website, the information about the TeslaX project is indicated in Russian. On ‘mesezuy.tech’ it is said that when investing in the project, it is possible to get the first profit from the very first week, while no experience is necessary at all, as the process is fully automated.
MeseZuY.tech states that those who want to participate in Elon Musk’s project will receive an income of 4,000 EUR per month, for which they must enter their name, email address and phone number in the field nearby.
The website also features a video, which was also uploaded on YouTube on June 1st, 2022. The video states that the project’s algorithm works like Tesla’s autopilot algorithm, and the only thing an interested person will have to do is invest in the project, which will bring them great financial benefits. The video also mentions that Grigory Leps, Maria Sharapova and Leonardo DiCaprio have already invested in the project.
Notably, using celebrity names on websites/posts with fraudulent content is a common method of attracting people. For more information on the topic, see articles prepared by “Myth Detector”:
- Fraudulent Website Encourages Users to Use a Cryptocurrency Trading Platform in the Name of the President of Georgia
- A Fraudulent Website in the Name of Valeri Meladze Promises to Make Georgians Rich (Available in Georgian)
- Altered Video in the Name of Elon Musk Contains Signs of Cyber Fraud
- Video of Mark Zuckerberg with Fake Russian Dubbing Disseminated on Facebook
About the website –MeseZuY.tech
According to ‘Who is Lookup’ data, the website MeseZuY.tech was created on December 23rd, 2022 and its IP address is located in Bayern, Germany.
The website also feature a section “Feedback from program participants”, where one of the participants, Иван Кац, writes that the project helped him get out of the financial crisis during the lockdown, considering that he had no experience at all.
After verifying the photo, it turned out that the photo of Иван Кац is taken from the YouTube channel “наши американские истории,” [Our American stories] where the Belarusian couple Olya and Andrey share information about life in the US.
Identical information about investing and making money, along with identical visuals, can also be found on other sites: teslax22ru.web.app, invst.coin-up and true-cap.grand-de.store. It should be noted that the IP address of teslax22ru.web.app is located in California. The data about the IP address of other two sites is not indicated on “Who is Lookup.”
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