So Elon Musk is purchasing Twitter, and you can bet that fraudsters are taking advantage of the situation. As Elon Musk spends the majority of the week in the news, so do Elon Musk-themed scams—and they seem to be on the rise. A swarm of responses from the guy himself in reaction to a statement.
If you have faced these kinds of scams or posts, report a scam with Report Scammed Bitcoin.
The URLs in their responses are all shortened. Whichever one a user chooses, they all lead to the same website. And like other Musk fans, Sebastian also fell into this trap.
Sebastian will always recall the day he lost £407,000 with a mixture of fury and guilt. Otherwise, the preceding night had been unremarkable.
Before she went to bed, he and his wife watched a Netflix series together, leaving him to fiddle with his phone on the couch. Then he got an Elon Musk-related Twitter notice.
"Musk tweeted, 'Dojo 4 Doge?' and I questioned what it meant," Sebastian said to the BBC. So I clicked on the link to the new event below to find out that he was giving away Bitcoin!
Sebastian clicked the link and arrived at a well-designed website where the Bitcoin giveaway appeared to be ongoing. There was a timer counting down, and the website promised participants they could double their money.
Elon Musk's Tesla team was running the competition. It invited people to send anything from 0.1 Bitcoin (worth approximately £4,300) to 20 Bitcoin (about £860,000), and the team would send back double the amount.
Sebastian double-checked the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name and then tried to decide whether to send five or 10 Bitcoin.
"'Take the maximum,' I thought, this is real, so I sent 10 Bitcoin."
As the timer wound down for the next 20 minutes, Sebastian waited for the prize to land in his Bitcoin wallet.
He sat there refreshing his screen every 30 seconds from his house in Cologne, Germany. Then, finally, he watched Mr. Musk tweet a new, cryptic message and was reassured that the giveaway was genuine.
Sebastian remarked, "I recognized then that it was a hoax," when the website's timer gradually decreased to zero.
My heart thumped loudly as I threw my head upon the couch cushions. I believed I had just thrown away a lifeline for my loved ones, my early retirement fund, and all the approaching holidays spent with my children."
To tell my wife, I walked upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed. I told her I had made a significant error when I roused her from sleep."
He spent hours sending emails to the fraudulent website and tweets to the false Elon Musk Twitter account to recover all or a portion of his money. However, he gradually believed that he had irretrievably lost the money.
Analysts have identified which Bitcoin addresses or wallets are operated by so-called "giveaway scammers" and have tracked the increasing amount of money they are making. Sebastian's 10 Bitcoin was the most they'd ever recorded losing in one transaction.
After spending several days with a sorrowful heart, he found Report Scammed Bitcoin and reported his incident to its form. He expected to get a result in his try to recover his money. So he talked with the expert of RSB and got some excellent suggestions and recommendations on the recovery process.
In 2021, fraudsters were reportedly earning record-breaking amounts. In the first three months of this year, giveaway gangs have already made more than $18 million (£13 million), compared to the $16 million earned for all of 2020.
Moreover, data predict that the number of casualties this year will surpass that of prior years. In 2020, around 10,500 individuals fell for the fraud, but analysts have already identified 5,600 people who have contributed money this year.
Since the advent of the frauds in 2018, the crooks' methods have not altered much. They construct Twitter profiles that resemble those of celebrities such as Elon Musk and billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya.
In certain instances, like the one that deceived Sebastian, fraudsters utilize the stolen accounts of notable individuals to guarantee that the accounts receive the blue verified checkmark, making them seem more trustworthy.
They wait for the legitimate accounts to tweet and then publish a reply that makes it seem like the celebrities tweeted the fraud to their millions of followers.
Twitter is a popular medium, but you may find giveaway frauds on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Sebastian desires that foreign authorities take action against the fraudsters and that Bitcoin exchange owners assist proactively. But, this is a harsh truth that foreign authorities and other big investigation organizations do not go all the way to investigate and recover the money as they put their limit on gathering information and tracking the criminal.
People who have lost money might get assistance from organizations such as RSB. They recommend that the appropriate parties work on these matters and assist those parties through legal contacts, consultations, and procedures.
"Bitcoin is too simple to steal. All exchange platform websites should know their clients' identities and if criminals are exploiting a particular wallet address."
In July 2020, a large-scale but short-lived Twitter breach enabled fraudsters to post using famous accounts such as Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian-West, and Elon Musk.
We recommend you get in touch with the Report Scammed Bitcoin if you've lost money sent to the applicable BTC address. Additionally, we recommend that you pay no attention to any of the many Elon Musk-related Bitcoin giveaways that are now ongoing.
Please read our latest articles on recent scam trends and the lists of categorized scammers. In addition, we have a dedicated list on the investment blacklist, forex scammer list and cryptocurrency scammer list.
One thing that stands out about these schemes is how inventive the con artists are in their attempts to convince you to join them. These are not lazy generic websites, and they are just wacky enough to fool Elon Musk enthusiasts into thinking they are genuine article.
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