Crypto Scam Steals Millions of Dollars With Elon Musk’s Name

Using an old trick, cybercriminals once again lure their victims with the promise of high Bitcoin profits. The prominent faces of Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Cathie Wood are used for advertising. This scam is already known from previous attempts to take over crypto exchanges from strangers. Strangers are now luring victims by promising to double their investments in a short time.

This lures unbiased crypto users who send their money to the cyber criminals in hopes of quickly turning $1,000 into $2,000, for example. Infographic Value Loss of Bitcoin: Difficult Times for Cryptocurrencies

An interview with Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Cathie Wood is tempting

The unknown scammers made more than $1.3 million in just a few weeks. They set their trap on YouTube: They re-streamed an edited version of an old live panel discussion on cryptocurrencies with Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Cathie Wood at the Ark Invest conference “The B Word”.

Bleeping Computer found about 10 YouTube channels reposting the manipulated discussion. In addition, there were additional elements designed to promote the scam, including the link to the fraudulent crypto profit website. There are reports that this scam has been going on since the beginning of the year. Security researchers from cybersecurity companies McAfee has published a report on this, in which they identified 11 fraudulent websites linked to the videos.

McAfee updated the report after it was published to say that the number of these websites had risen to 26 in just 24 hours. “The YouTube streams promoted several websites with a similar theme. They claim to send cryptocurrencies at twice the value received. For example, if you send 1BTC, you will receive 2BTC back,” said McAfee.

Cheated With Unknown Number

McAfee has also investigated the crypto wallets associated with the sites to which the victims had to send their “investment”. For example, on May 5, there were trades worth $280,000. Total damage was estimated at $1.3 million. Numbered, but there are certainly a significant number of other victims.