A Twitter Scam Verified Accounts And Stole $1M In Fake APECoin

A Twitter scam verified accounts and stole up to $1 million in fake APEcoin after promoting a phony airdrop this week as we can see more today in altcoin’s latest news.

The Twitter phishing scam hacked verified accounts and some of them had Bored Ape Yacht Club profile pictures with the scam sought to defraud crypto users of a little more than $1 million this week in a fake Apecoin airdrop. For those that missed last week’s news, Apecoin is a crypto that can be claimed by BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders and was launched by ApeCoin DAO with the token powering spin-off projects from the franchise.

Just for the avoidance of doubt. The verified account @BhawanaCAN is an obvious scam promoting an "Ape Coin airdrop" and also the verified account of @ToddWasserman has been hacked and used for scamming.
Almost nothing is what it seems, and if it seems too good to be true, it is. pic.twitter.com/skw6d6jnFi

— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) March 24, 2022

This week’s fake airdrop lured some victims with a legitimate tweet coming from the hacked accounts that read:

 “Launch of Ape Coin has been a big success! We have collectively decided to airdrop some more to active NFT Traders/Holders. If you don’t currently own NFTs, you can claim with a 0.33 ETH fee!”

(5/11) Included among the accounts being spammed was @iSocialFanz (aka Fanzo), host of the @NFT365Podcast, and someone who is quite technical (having spent a decade with the U.S. DoD focused on cybersecurity) pic.twitter.com/1OucPWFqvR

— AnChain.AI (@AnChainAI) March 22, 2022

The tweet enclosed a link bait for the scam. The NFT collector Bored Alien Silver Ape was one of the worst affected as he lost half a million dollars worth of BAYC and MAYC NFTs according to Etherscan. He blamed the account called Bhawana Ghimire which was a name drawn from the CEO of Cricket Association of Nepal. The verified account was turned into a BAYC founder. Blockchain analytics account AnChain AI used a play to play breakdown of the scam and identified three more compromised accounts that are involved in spreading the attack while one claimed to be a BAYC founder with sports journalist Gavin Quinn and musician Mila.

(6/11) Oddly, Fanzo appears to have had his wallet exploited despite never clicking the malicious link pic.twitter.com/lmnY9JiXZJ

— AnChain.AI (@AnChainAI) March 22, 2022

The account called NFTEthics identified business journalist Todd Wasserman had this account compromised in the scam and in addition to the accounts, most verified profiles were scammed out of the assets including NFT 365 podcaster Fanzo who spend a decade with a US Department of Defense focusing on cybersecurity but he had a wallet exploited despite never clicking on the link. Aarontch.eth lost over 34 ETH worth of NFT despite never connecting the wallet to the malicious link the compromised accounts seem to have been returned to their owners. The scam proved to be a lucrative venture for the assailant and they raked in over $1 million in the Twitter scam.