Knowing that, enterprising hackers in recent days took over several “verified” accounts, tweaking their profiles to look like Elon Musk’s account. They then urged users to send a small amount of bitcoin BTCUSD, in exchange for the promise of more bitcoin to be sent back. One of the bitcoin wallets linked in the tweets has already received about $180,000 from those somehow buying into the scam. As you can see, the wallet below has collected 28 bitcoin, which is currently trading $6,435 each.
This may be the most successful attempt at duping Musk fans, but it’s not the first. A version of this scam popped up earlier this year, when accounts bearing the Tesla TSLA, boss’s name and image just straight up asked for bitcoin.
This kind of nonsense eventually led to Musk actually getting blocked from his own Twitter account.
In response to the latest outbreak, Twitter TWTR, explained to the BBC that it “substantially improved how we tackle cryptocurrency scams on the platform” and “user impressions have fallen by a multiple of 10 as we continue to invest in more proactive tools to detect spammy and malicious activity.”
