Musk, Obama, Biden, Bezos, Gates—bitcoin scam hits Twitter in coordinated blitz
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)
Twitter accounts of the rich and famous-including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Joe Biden-were simultaneously hijacked on Wednesday and used to push cryptocurrency scams.
As of 3:58pm California time, one wallet address used to receive victim's digital coin had received more than $118,000, though it wasn't clear all of it came from people who fell for the scam. The bitcoin came from 356 transactions that all occurred over about a four-hour span on Tuesday. The wallet address appeared in tweets from at least 15 accounts-some with tens of millions of followers-that promoted fraudulent incentives to transfer money. At least one other Bitcoin wallet was used in the mass scam.
I'm giving back to all my followers," one now-deleted tweet from Musk's account said. I am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send 0.1 BTC, I send 0.2 BTC back!" A tweet from the Bezos account said the same thing. Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time," a Gates tweet said. I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000."
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments