Elon Musk is such a force on social media, that scam artists and crooks have used his name to lure in victims who become easy prey for the criminals.
A new report says its easy for crooks to lure in victims. The FTC said their data shows that just since October of 2020, consumers have reported losing over $80 million on cryptocurrency investment scams. That’s ten times more than the previous year the FTC said.
Blame it on Musk’s popularity on Twitter, and the get rich quick dreams the victims have.
In the past six months Elon Musk impersonators on social media have stolen over $2 million in cryptocurrency.
Fox News described a typical scam working like this: Malwarebytes says one scam making the rounds starts like this: a Twitter account goes viral with a popular tweet. Then a bot account replies with a screenshot. In this case it appears to show Elon Musk, on Twitter, saying:
“Just google ‘Topmid Dust Watch’ and thank me later,” – a reference to a map in the popular video game “Counter-Strike.”
It’s all an elaborate ruse for scammers to find a way to get people’s credit cards and address to ship you the “free” product.
Back in February, a scam artist was able to get $560,000 by posing as Musk. The victim received a Twitter notification that appeared to by from Musk. News flash: it wasn’t. The competition from Musk was bogus, but the victim still sent 10 bitcoin to the scammers and he has no chance of getting it back.
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