This crypto spoofing scam has become almost predictable as it happens all of the time. Crooks attempting to steal cryptocurrency will try and spoof Twitter accounts to make it look like a trusted, known individual or business is giving away ETH or BTC only to digitally pickpocket the funds. Pavel Durov, the creator of Telegram, is the just the most recent target of this type of con.
You can review the Tweet thread here below:
We are sorry for incident that took place!
As our apology we want you to participate in our promotions for ethereum and bitcoin!
Details below!
— Pavel Durov (@PavleDurov) April 29, 2018
And then the nefarious Twitter bots kick in …
I double sеnt, first 5.0 and 9.0 ETH, and gоt 140 ETH!!!!!!
Dеposit Completed! ETН 50.000000, 2018-04-29 15:57:14.
Dеposit Completed! ETН 90.000000, 2018-04-29 16:00:42.ТHANK YOU!!!!!!!!
— Bassir Pechaz (@janetcoffey84) April 29, 2018
This type of scam has been attempted probably hundreds of times yet sometimes people do fall for the trap.
According to this post on Medium, the crooks have made off with at least over $500,000 in crypto. Not a small amount.
Yesterday, prominent crowdfunding platform Republic got hit with a similar type of spoof. The unfortunate thing it is pretty hard to stop these types of attacks.
Sorry to ruin everyone’s day, but we’re not giving away 5000 ETH 😆 The fake account replying to some of our tweets has already been reported to @TwitterSupport so don’t fall for it.
— Republic (@joinrepublic) April 28, 2018
As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is… Hopefully, Twitter (and Telegram for that matter) will figure a way to stop these types of cons.
