Fake 'Elon Musk' Twitter account launched cryptocurrency scam in Donald Trump's tweet replies and stole $32,000 in bitcoin from users in just a few hours
A scammer portraying Elon Musk was attempting to trick users into handing over cryptocurrency in the reply section of Donald Trump's tweets.
The verified account surfaced online Wednesday with the display name ‘Elon Musk,’ and replied to Trump’s tweets discussing the presidential election.
The fraudulent tweet states the election is almost decided and to celebrate, he is doing a giveaway, which shows a link to ‘musk-coins.com.’
Mashable first spotted the scam, which found the link redirects users to a site that asks for bitcoins in exchange for a larger return.
The cybercriminal has since changed their Twitter name and removed the website, but not before raking in $32,000 worth of bitcoin and over $6,000 in ether.
A scammer portraying Elon Musk was spotted in the reply section of Donald Trump's tweets attempting to trick users into handing over cryptocurrency. The verified account surfaced online Wednesday with the display name ‘Elon Musk,’ and replied to Trump’s tweets discussing the presidential election
The user ‘@emmaisaac’ rolled out this scam by targeting Trump’s tweets shared Wednesday afternoon.
‘They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country,’ reads one of the many tweets shared by the president.
And in the comment section is the ‘Elon Musk’ cryptocurrency scam.
‘It is almost decided! To commemorate, we are giving to the people: go to website: musk-coins. com Hint: just remove the space,’ the tweet reads.
To make things appear legitimate, emmaisaac event added links to YouTube Videos on SpaceX’s account.
The user ‘@emmaisaac’ rolled out this scam by targeting Trump’s tweets shared Wednesday afternoon. To make things appear legitimate, emmaisaac event added links to YouTube Videos on SpaceX’s account
Following a further investigation into the Internet Archive, Mashable found that the verified account was previously owned by Emma Isaacs who is the CEO of BusinessChicks – and her image is still shown as the banner on the fraudulent account.
Twitter had made a commitment in 2018 to automatically lock accounts that changed its display name to ‘Elon Musk,’ as it seems to be the go-to persona when launching cryptocurrency ‘giveaway’ scams.
Following a further investigation into the Internet Archive, Mashable found that the verified account was previously owned by Emma Isaacs (pictured) who is the CEO BusinessChicks – and her image is still shown as the banner on the fraudulent account
A similar, but more disastrous hack took over Twitter accounts in June that targeted high-profile users including Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and of course, Elon Musk
A similar, but more disastrous hack took over Twitter accounts in June that targeted high-profile users including Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and of course, Elon Musk.
Hackers claimed to have paid one or more Twitter staff for access to internal systems which allowed them to hijack the accounts and post tweets asking users to send them Bitcoin.
Around 300 people were duped by the tweets, sending $1118,000 to the hackers before Twitter took the tweets down and then locked all verified accounts to stop the breach spreading further. In total, the attack lasted for four hours.
In the days following, the hacker’s name and face surfaced, and he and three others were arrested.
The mastermind was deemed Graham Ivan Clark, 17, who lived in Florida and is currently facing 30 felony charges for hacking those accounts, posting messages on their behalf and luring additional victims into sending him Bitcoin donations, authorities said.
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