Magazine launch hires ‘fake’ Elon Musk, enraging guests who ‘waited a month’ to meet real thing

‘All I can say is that this was [a result of] the differences between Chinese and Western cultures’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building on 24 January, 2023 in San Francisco, California. - An event in Flushing, New York invited a Musk impersonator and the organiser has been accused of lying (Getty Images)

A Chinese community leader in New York City is facing accusations of deceit after he invited an Elon Musk impersonator to an event last month.

Gary Kong, president of not-for-profit corporation Sino-American Commerce Association in Flushing, New York invited the Tesla boss impersonator to launch the first issue of a magazine, Wall St Magazine, at James Hotel in Manhattan on 27 April.

Over 100 guests attended the event, expecting the real Mr Musk to make an appearance. An impersonator instead came for the event, shook hands with guests and unveiled the first issue of the magazine, said reports in Chinese outlet The Paper and the South China Morning Post.

The impersonator even had bodyguards surrounding him.

The guests later found out that the real Tesla billionaire was not present at the event, after which they accused Mr Kong of lying and deceiving them to attract a large audience for the event.

The Sino-American Commerce Association had earlier issued a statement to publicise the April event. It read: “Elon Musk launch cover appearance party in Manhattan.”

One of the guests had visited the US from China for the event. In a video shared widely on Chinese social media, according to SCMP, she was enraged as she had spent over a month in the country “just to meet Musk”.

Screengrab from a Weibo video of the New York event shows the Elon Musk impersonator (Weibo/Gao Weiwei)

“[This event] has received a lot of attention in China, but it’s unexpected that the person who showed up, in the end, was fake... it’s unacceptable to cheat Chinese people like this, Chinese people deceiving Chinese people is too much,” she can be heard saying in the video, according to SCMP.

To diffuse the situation, the association’s founding president held a press conference a few days after the Manhattan event.

“All I can say is that this was [a result of] the differences between Chinese and Western cultures,” said Annie Fu, emphasising that the Chinese audience likely misunderstood the statement that was issued to publicise the event.

Mr Kong, an entrepreneur himself, also clarified that the 27 April event was free and nobody was asked to pay a fee to attend the launch of the magazine, rubbishing claims that some paid $10,000 to meet the Twitter boss. However, in March, a similar event had been planned, and later cancelled, and some guests from mainland China had reportedly been charged $30,000.

It was not clear whether those guests had received their refunds.

The Independent has reached out to Sino-American Commerce Association’s Mr Kong for a comment.