Crypto scammers make off with thousands in fake Elon Musk Twitter giveaway
Capitalising on the hype surrounding the Tesla CEO’s appearance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, the scammers managed to con unsuspecting Twitter users out of US$100,000 in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin
Scammers have managed to make off with around US$100,000 in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin after concocting a fake giveaway on Twitter ahead of () CEO Elon Musk’s appearance on US sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) last weekend.
According to the MalwareHunterTeam Twitter account, the scammers used at least 20 unverified accounts of the social media platform, designed to resemble the real SNL account, to promote the fake crypto giveaway by Musk.
The scammers used at least around 20 verified accounts in this SNL campaign to spread the scam sites & made at least some 100k $ worth BTC, ETH & Doge. If the prices will go up in the next months as experts says & they not cash out until then, they made an easy ~1kk$ in 2 days…
— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) May 10, 2021
READ: Dogecoin heads to the moon, literally
The victims were then convinced to send small amounts of crypto to verify their addresses, being told they would receive around ten times the amount in return.
The scam has echoes of a previous effort by hackers to steal crypto from unsuspecting punters in July last year when hijackers took control of the Twitter accounts of several high profile celebrities, business figures and politicians in order to promote a bogus Bitcoin giveaway.
Accounts hacked in the attack last year included Musk as well as Amazon Inc () founder Jeff Bezos, music artist Kanye West, investor Warren Buffet and former US president Barack Obama.
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