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Twitter Scammers Used Elon Musk's 'SNL' Appearance to Reap $100K in Crypto

The scammers reportedly hijacked verified Twitter accounts to promote a fake giveaway by the Tesla CEO.

By Jamie Crawley
AccessTimeIconMay 10, 2021 at 9:26 a.m. UTC
Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 12:52 p.m. UTC
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Bad actors used the hype around Elon Musk’s "Saturday Night Live" appearance to promote a fake giveaway on Twitter that reportedly defrauded nearly $100,000 in bitcoin, ether and dogecoin.

  • The scammers managed to access over 20 unused but verified Twitter accounts, changed the profiles to make them resemble the "SNL" Twitter account and promoted a fake crypto giveaway purportedly by the Tesla CEO, Malware Hunter tweeted Saturday.
  • Victims were duped into sending small amounts of the cryptocurrencies to verify their addresses and under the false promise they would receive 10 times the amount in return.
  • This earned the scammers $40,840 in BTC, $13,758 in ETH and $42,457 in DOGE for a total of $97,054, Bleeping Computer reported.
  • The mass hijacking is reminiscent of the Twitter hacks in July 2020 that saw prominent accounts – including those of Joe Biden and Elon Musk – taken over to promote a similar scam.
  • Twitter said soon after it was bringing in extra security measures to help keep such events from happening again.

See also: WallStreetBets Members May Have Lost Over $2M to Telegram Crypto Scam: Report

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