This new Elon Musk Twitter scam is raking in millions
Scams come in many forms, and criminals seemingly have no shame in spreading them. The most common is through social media or phishing attacks, but sometimes they rope in the help of well-known personalities.
Elon Musk and Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey are the latest examples of familiar faces promoting cryptocurrency investments. But this is, of course, without their authorization and the promotion is fake.
Read on for ways to spot scams like these and what you can do about them.
Here’s the backstory
A series of YouTube videos supposedly starring Musk, Dorsey and investor Cathie Wood have been widely shared recently. The videos show the trio promoting various cryptocurrency websites and services. The lure is that you can double your investment in 24 hours.
But it shouldn’t take an online detective to realize that the videos are fake and the websites linked to the promotional campaign are malicious. As McAfee points out in a blog post, the scammers manipulated clips of Musk and Dorsey and broadcast them on YouTube as a live stream.
While the talks on cryptocurrency by Musk and Dorsey are real, the scammers put their frame around it and included several web links. In case it’s not clear, Musk, Dorsey and Wood aren’t promoting the crypto websites, and if you invest money in them, it’ll be lost forever.
The criminals cleverly put a table of recent transactions on the screen during the live broadcast to further sell the falsehood. This was supposed to show that others were actively investing as the video progressed.
What you can do about it
McAfee initially found 11 websites linked to the scammers. However, it wasn’t long after that that the cybersecurity company quickly linked 15 other websites to the scammers, bringing the total to 26.
In a worrying discovery, McAfee revealed that “the combined value of the wallets shared on these sites is over $1,300,000.” This makes it an alarmingly lucrative venture.
It can be tricky to spot scams. Fortunately, there are some tell-tale signs:
Be careful how you answer that cryptocurrency question on your tax return
Filing your federal taxes can be a relatively complex endeavor. Thankfully you don’t have to verify your identity through a third party anymore, but other pitfalls can make it difficult.
One such issue can arise from cryptocurrency, and depending on how you used it over the last year, you could find yourself in trouble with the IRS. The various digital currencies have exploded in popularity, and the IRS wants to know if you’ve been trading them.
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