XRP scammers hacked the Supreme Court of India’s YouTube account, although, while it recovered, it lost its subscriber base.
The Supreme Court of India quickly regained control of its official YouTube account after it was hijacked by cryptocurrency scammers promoting fake XRP investments.
On September 20, hackers took over the Supreme Court’s YouTube account and used it to broadcast a livestream video promoting fraudulent XRP investments, featuring a fake appearance by Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
The hackers rebranded the channel to resemble Ripple and deleted all the previously uploaded content, as seen in a screenshot.
YouTube removed the compromised channel the same day it was hacked, and the Supreme Court of India issued a public notice, stating, “This is to inform all concerned that the YouTube channel of Supreme Court of India has been taken down.”
The Hacked YouTube Account Has Not Been Fully Restored
Later that day, the Supreme Court announced that it had successfully recovered its YouTube account from the XRP scammers.
However, an investigation by Cointelegraph revealed that YouTube was unable to restore the channel’s original 217,000 subscribers and previous video content.
The channel was renamed “Vansh” and had only 15 subscribers post-recovery.
Google Search’s cached data confirmed the recovered account belonged to the Supreme Court of India, despite the discrepancies after restoration.
Around the same time, during Apple’s iPhone 16 launch in September, YouTube was inundated with livestreams showing deepfakes of Apple CEO Tim Cook promoting crypto scams.
YouTube’s support team acknowledged the issue in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on September 9, urging users to report such videos through its official reporting tool.
The fraudulent videos were taken down, and the related accounts have been closed.
