Scammers earned over $ 5 thousand in cryptocurrency in one night, pretending to be celebrities

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Cyber fraudsters earned more than $ 5 thousand in Ethereum cryptocurrency overnight by creating fake celebrity profiles on Twitter and sending messages urging users to allegedly take part in "giveaways". It is reported by the Bleeping Computer edition.

The attackers tricked users into sending them a small amount of cryptocurrency, promising to send back a tenfold amount. All messages were made according to the same template, differing only in the indicated amounts and addresses of cryptocurrency wallets.

“We're donating 200 Ethereum to the ETH community! The first 50 transactions with 0.2 ETH sent to the address below will receive 2.0 ETH to the sender's address, ”reads the message.

Scammers have created fake profiles for many celebrities, including businessman Elon Musk, founder of McAfee antivirus manufacturer John McAfee, co-founder of the Ethereum project Vitalik Buterin, entrepreneur Warren Buffett, Coinbase and CoinMarketCap exchanges, as well as OmiseGo and Nano Cryptocurrency services.

According to the newspaper, the scammers managed to collect a total of more than 7.69 units of "ether" worth about $ 6.4 thousand (at the time of writing).

The fraudulent campaign has been going on for almost two weeks, but the largest amount of funds was transferred on the night of February 6-7, 2018. Most of the money was transferred to wallets allegedly belonging to John McAfee, Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk ... Interest in Musk's fake profile is due to the successful launch on February 6, 2018 of the Falcon Heavy rocket, created by the businessman's SpaceX company.