If you are on social media, you have probably seen cryptocurrency tweets purported to be originating from Elon Musk. It is now emerging that cryptocurrency scammers pretending to be the Tesla Boss have made more than $2 million dollars in the last six months alone.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has raised alarm over the high rate of cryptocurrency scams which are up by 1000 percent.
The FTC reports showed that they had received more than 7,000 complaints from users who had been scammed more than $80 million worth of cryptocurrency since October 2020.
Read: Bitcoin Scammers Hack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Bidden Twitter Accounts
The scams lure people by starting off as good tip boards before followers are redirected to fake investment websites.
The scammers reportedly impersonate influential twitter users by using closely related names or copying the real names of the persons from their real accounts. In Elon Musk’s case, one user had their name with a fake verification badge as their username, making it easy to dupe the unsuspecting public.
They often post replies to popular tweets made by the influential personality to give their messages clout on the social network.
People pretending to be Musk alone had made more than $2 million since October 2020.
Read also: FBI Launches Investigation Into Twitter Hacking Incident
Last year, many users lost millions in cryptocurrency after hackers compromised accounts belonging to celebrities and politicians.
The FTC has since issued a set of guidelines to help people avoid such scammers
- guaranteed returns are always fake
- Promises of free money are also fake
- scammers often make big claims without details or explanations
- celebrity endorsements or testimonials are easily faked
- be extremely wary of anyone asking you to pay by wire transfer or gift card, which are virtually impossible to recover
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