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

A screenshot from a bogus Apple live stream that actually seems to be a crypto scam. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Someone on YouTube was live streaming an old interview with Tim Cook that was seemingly being used to attract attention to a crypto scam — and when it was live, tens of thousands of viewers were tuning.

If you’ve seen crypto scams on YouTube before, you would have recognized a lot of hallmarks of what was going on. The fake live stream was getting attention by filling its description with an array of Apple keywords in both the title and description. But when you actually opened it up, it was filled with odd messages linking to a shady-looking crypto site.

“Apple Crypto Event 2022”

The stream had plenty of signs of being fake. It had a strange title — “Apple Event Live. Ceo of Apple Tim Cook: Apple & Metaverse in 2022.” — and it’s was...

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