A Post-SNL scam managed to rake $300,000 in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum as scammers were able to steal a lot of crypto in a short period of time by using verified Twitter accounts as we read more in our latest cryptocurrency news today.
Scammers stole a lot of cryptos using Elon Musk’s high-profile appearance on Saturday Night Live to con people out of $300,000. The scam is quite the old trick which is using fake accounts to rake in crypto for phony giveaways. Cybercrooks swindled about $300,000 in crypto from investors across the world during the weekend by using Elon Musk’s SNL appearance to scam people as per the data released today.
Musk appeared on the Saturday Night Live shows at the weekend and promoted his favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. The meme coin dipped in value after the appearance but it was the right chance for scammers to use his persona as a front for a scam. The post-SNL scam raked up to $300,000 in crypto via Twitter accounts and asked people to send their coins to dodgy addresses.
Another verified account is being used to spread SNL / Musk themed scam: https://t.co/ZFCwVJ6IPR
Tweeting scam started less than 20 minutes ago from that account…@Spam404 pic.twitter.com/rBshl4pOX6— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) May 8, 2021
MalwareHunterTeam is a website that tracked malware activity online that explained the situation and the criminal addresses received $191,293 in BTC, ETH, and $90K in DOGE. The coin artists claimed that by sending the crypto to the address, more crypto would be sent back in return and this trick is not something new as it has already plagued social media for years. MalwareHunterTeam said:
“This type of scamming is going for long time, people lost millions (if we count with the prices right now, tens of millions) of $ in coins and there is still no signs of real care about this from Twitter.”
By using the verified accounts that copy profiles of Elon Musk during SNL, people fall easily for these scams as the analysts wrote. Because of profiles looking real and having the blue Twitter verification trick, people are more susceptible to thinking that the giveaways are genuine. Another sophisticated scam made headlines last year when two high-profile accounts like Joe Biden’s and Kim Kardashian were hacked by a scammer to promote a fake BTC giveaway scheme where more than $120,000 was sent in donations.
The scammers used at least around 20 verified accounts in this SNL campaign to spread the scam sites & made at least some 100k $ worth BTC, ETH & Doge. If the prices will go up in the next months as experts says & they not cash out until then, they made an easy ~1kk$ in 2 days…
— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) May 10, 2021
The hacker was a 17-year old Graham Ivan Clark who was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of probation after pleading guilty to financial fraud charges.
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