Scammers successfully tricked viewers in to sending a small amount of Bitcoin and get double in return.
Crypto scams are a reality and have been attacking devices and unsuspecting users for long. The concerning aspect is that the efficiencies and capabilities of crypto scammers are growing day-by-day.
Also, if you are following Elon Musk on Twitter you may have already seen scammers impersonating his account to conduct crypto scams. The latest such scam involves three YouTube channels that have been hijacked for impersonating Elon Musk’s SpaceX channel.
What’s shocking about this scam is that attackers have collected approx. $150,000 in Bitcoin in just a few days.
See: Hackers use Github bot to steal $1,200 in ETH within 100 seconds
Reportedly, three YouTube channels previously titled Juice TV, MaximSakulevich, and Right Human were renamed as SpaceX and SpaceX Live after getting hijacked.
One of these channels had 230,000 subscribers while the other had over 130,000 subscribers. However, the legit YouTube channel SpaceX has around 4.33 million subscribers.
The hijacked YouTube channels were live streaming original recordings of Elon Musk’s interviews or SpaceX conferences while encouraging viewers to send in a small amount of Bitcoin and get it doubled in return.
One channel was requesting viewers to send cryptocurrency at 1ELonMUSK14JSGNYAcPJNqubuFByZPyjcj which received 29 bitcoin transactions, leading to a total of 4.08 BTC (roughly $39,840.18).
Another channel was asking users to send bitcoin at 3EtrSPskMRgwEEE9onLdmwcAFqaH9jj9rM, and in total 84 transactions were made to this address. The total amount of Bitcoin received by this address was around 11.23 BTC ($109,658.14).
Moreover, thousands of people are viewing the live stream. According to reports, at the time of writing on June 9th, 2020, around 80,000 people were watching, which is why it isn’t quite surprising that scammers have managed to rake in such a huge amount.
However, the good news is that YouTube has terminated all 3 compromised channels.
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The primary reason why such scams are always a huge success is that people still believe in crypto giveaways and receiving double the amount they paid. You must void falling prey to such misleading marketing tactics and refrain from sending in money hoping to get it doubled.
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i did report these accounts to YouTube as they were active during btc halving put no response was seen.