Elon Musk and His Likeness Were at the Center of Another Twitter BTC Scam

Just prior to his anticipated “SNL” appearance, it appears Elon Musk was once again the subject of a Twitter-based bitcoin scam that saw several of his social media followers getting BTC-related spam in their message feeds.

It Looks Like an Elon Musk Twitter Account Was Compromised

It seems like Elon Musk and his followers just cannot catch a break in this department. Musk is constantly the subject of several crypto based social media scams. For the most part, it looks like many of these instances simply use his likeness, though in other instances, things have gotten quite hairy and dangerous in many ways.

One such instance occurred last summer when a teenager took over the Twitter accounts of several well-known and public figures including former president Barack Obama, his vice president Joe Biden, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates and, of course, the South African entrepreneur himself. The teen posted messages to their Twitter pages requesting that people forward their bitcoin to anonymous addresses. Once they did so, their money would be doubled simply because these figures were feeling “generous.”

Well, nobody who fell for the scheme saw their money get doubled. In fact, many of them just saw their funds disappear altogether. They had no idea that these accounts had been maliciously compromised, and that the person at the helm was just looking for a little extra digital cash he could store inside his pockets. Overall, the teen made off with approximately $121,000 BTC. He has since been arrested and has entered a plea deal that will see him serve a reduced sentence granted that he returns the stolen funds in a timely manner.

While this may be a step in the right direction, it looks like another instance of malicious bitcoin behavior has stepped in to take its place. A fraud tracker operating under the Twitter name @MalwareHunterTeam posted several screenshots to Twitter over the weekend showing pictures of accounts that appeared to have been compromised, one of which belonged to Musk.

The fraud tracker posted the following:

Another verified account is being used to spread an SNL/ Musk themed scam.

Whoever got control of the account ultimately responded to tweets that were sent to Musk. Additional tweets were also posted discussing potential crypto giveaways. These involved as many as 5,000 BTC and more than 100 million Dogecoin, two assets Musk has spoken highly of in the past. What was the catch? Users had to send digital money first to be considered – very reminiscent of last summer’s hack and a big red flag at this point.

What Were the Giveaways?

The Dogecoin-related message, for example, read as follows:

We are ready to present the event we announced on our show today. We want to thank our supporters and help crypto adoption. 100,000,000 Doge will be distributed among everyone that takes part in this event.

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