About 150,000 in total were viewing three livestreams showing the fake Musk on the 7News channel at the time of writing. It’s unknown how many viewers are bots in a bid to boost viewership numbers.

Links to the 7News YouTube channel were broken, but the hijacked channel still showed the news organization’s verification tick.

A Seven spokesperson told The Sydney Morning Herald that the company was aware some of its YouTube channels were not appearing as normal.

“Seven is investigating and working with YouTube to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.

YouTube did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

A website shared by the scammers asks for Bitcoin 
BTC

tickers down
$60,943

, Ether 
ETH

tickers down
$3,375

, Solana 
SOL

tickers down
$136

 and Dogecoin 
DOGE

tickers down
$0.12

, with the listed addresses holding just over $11,000 in total between them.