Malicious actors took advantage of Elon Musk’s increased crypto involvement to rip an unsuspecting victim of his hard-earned funds. Last month, a German bitcoin investor lost 10 BTC valued at around £407,000 ($552,490) at the time of writing.
Explaining in detail how he got scammed, the victim told BBC that he received a notification on a popular microblogging platform from the Tesla boss, where he promoted the DOGE cryptocurrency.
The tweet read, ‘Dojo 4 Doge.’
However, in the comment section, a verified Twitter user with the username @JoshyMcB had taken the opportunity to promote a fake giveaway scam.
Like most schemes of that sort, the scammer, who renamed his Twitter name to that of Elon Musk’, noted in the comment section that he was holding a “special event” that would give everyone a fair chance, with a link added to the post.
Users who clicked on the link saw a giveaway, which promised to double any amount of Bitcoin (BTC) sent to an address on the site. The fraudster also added a timer to the platform to make unsuspecting victims believe they would miss out on the life-changing opportunity should the countdown end.
People were asked to donate between 0.1 BTC ($5,524) and 20 BTC ($1,104,980) to the address, to become a beneficiary.
Enticed by the offer, the victim, only checked the verification ticker on the account without considering the username, which would have made him realize it was a scam.
At that moment, he disclosed to BBC that he was contemplating whether to send 5 bitcoins or 10 BTC, unfortunately, he opted for the latter and waited eagerly for the ROI to be transferred to his wallet, but he got nothing.
Again, he received another notification of a crypto tweet from Mr. Musk, which assured him that the giveaway was real. However, as the countdown ran down to zero, it became clear to him that he had been scammed.
Devastated and disappointed in himself, he threw his “head on to the sofa cushions and thought I’d just thrown away the gamechanger for my family, my early retirement fund, and all the upcoming holidays with my kids,” he said.
Not New…
The antic deployed by the hacker is not new, as it has been in existence for quite a long time. While many social media users are now informed about this tactic, others have allowed their emotions to get the best of them.
Fraudsters are aware that it is very difficult for social media users to fall for the cheap scam, and has gone a step further to gain illegal control of popular industry players to promote these scams.
One event that shocked the crypto space last July was the hack of several Twitter accounts belonging to celebrities and financial experts to defraud unsuspecting victims. Coinfomania reported that popular exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin, etc. also had their accounts hacked for a similar purpose.
