Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates And Others Apparently Hacked In Bitcoin Scam
The Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, former President Barack Obama and at least three tech bigwigs — Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — appear to have been hacked in a digital currency scam.
Musk’s Twitter account posted multiple messages on Wednesday promising to “double” payments to his bitcoin address, also known as a BTC address.
Biden’s and Gates’ account posted a similar message, telling followers: “If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000.”
Bezos’ account also vowed to double payments sent to his BTC address. “I am only doing a maximum of $50,000,000,” a tweet on the Amazon founder’s account said.
An identical BTC address was posted to all three accounts.
Several major Twitter accounts were hacked, including @bitcoin, @ripple, @elonmusk, and @billgates to spread the cryptocurrency scam. So far, the scammers have stolen over $50,000 from unsuspecting victims in just over an hour.
More: https://t.co/5AhItP6viepic.twitter.com/te11QNVna5— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) July 15, 2020
As BuzzFeed tech reporter Ryan Mac noted, the posted BTC address did appear to be receiving bitcoin on Wednesday but said it was hard to say whether those transactions were being seeded by the scammers themselves or being sent by people who may have been duped.
“This goes without saying, but do not send the account money,” Mac warned.
TechCrunch said at least $50,000 had already been stolen as part of the scheme.
It's an actual wallet address and there are transactions happening. It's unclear if these transactions are legit. Scammers often seed their own scams to give them the appearance of authenticity. https://t.co/GUHEDaKNxupic.twitter.com/xfhl3817xr
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) July 15, 2020
CNBC reported that similar tweets promising a doubled return had appeared on the verified accounts of several major tech companies, including Apple, Uber and Cash App. Rapper and...
