Fake Elon Musk Rakes in More Than $37K in Latest Twitter Bitcoin and Crypto Scam

The latest series of online Elon Musk impersonations is putting Twitter back in the crypto hot seat.

Hackers are using Elon Musk’s name, bio and image to hack other verified Twitter accounts and transform them into “official” Elon Musk accounts. They then use the newly created fake Musk accounts to lure victims into donating Bitcoin. The ploy has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Target got hacked this morning, reports The Verge.

“Early this morning, Target’s Twitter account was inappropriately accessed. The access lasted for approximately half an hour and one fake tweet was posted during that time about a bitcoin scam. We’re in close contact with Twitter, have deleted the tweet and have locked the account while we investigate further.”

The simple call-to-action tells people to send the Musk imposter their crypto.

“I decided to make the biggest crypto-giveaway in the world, for all my readers who use Bitcoin… To verify your [bitcoin] address, send from 0.1 to 2 BTC to the address below and get from 1 to 20 BTC back.”

The Twitter community is chiming in with tips on how to stop the hackers who keep casting a scammy halo around Bitcoin.

Already do that. They just work around it. Their latest version they split the website link so you need a way to puzzle out the link from their broken out text. They could just have a support person read the reply tweets I notice about 50 different accounts in the first mins

— Anner J. Bonilla of almost HW 2.5 ?????? (@annerajb) November 12, 2018

The fake promoted tweets manage to dupe users as the tweets bearing Elon Musk’s name go viral.

@TwitterSupport multiple of these fraudulent ads recently claiming to be Elon Musk and including a blue check mark next to his name but having some other user name and offering bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/GuZzut8ikd

— D. Allen (@dallen) November 5, 2018

The latest scam tweet allegedly from Musk raked in $37,000 shortly after it was posted, reports TechCrunch. It involved a hack of clothing retailer @FarahMenswear who has 15,500 followers. After his account promoted an Elon Musk “bitcoin giveaway,” the designated bitcoin address received over 5.84 Bitcoin, or roughly $37,000.

According to a report by The Independent, cryptocurrency addresses on the blockchain reveal that over 400 crypto enthusiasts, eager to help Musk, sent more then 28.2 Bitcoin to the scammers during the last hack on November 6, worth roughly $177,000.