'ELON MUSK Twitter Giveaway' Scam
Despite its polarising takes on many hot-button topics, Elon Musk is undoubtedly a massively popular figure. Cybercriminals are well aware of this fact, and more precisely, of Mr. Musk's support for the cryptocurrency sector. That is why his name and companies - Tesla and SpaceX, are often exploited as lures in online schemes. The 'ELON MUSK Twitter Giveaway' page is precisely such an example of a tactic.
The site talks about the deal Elon Musk signed for the acquisition of the social media platform Twitter. According to the claims of the fraudsters, amidst this massive deal valued at $44 Billion, Elon Musk has also apparently decided to run a cryptocurrency giveaway totaling 5000 BTC and 50, 000 (ETH). At the current exchange prices, the equivalent sums are just shy of $97 million for Bitcoin and over $65 million for Ethereum.
The fraudulent page states that users can send either Bitcoin or Ethereum to a special 'contribution address,' which in reality is just a crypto-wallet under the control of the fraudsters. The accepted contribution can range from 0.1 BTC to 20 BTC or 0.5 ETH up to 200 ETH. In return, all participants will receive double the contributed amount. To push users toward making bigger contributions, the con artists state that each participant can send money only once.
Naturally, the chances of seeing any money in return are practically zero, as these people will simply run away with all received funds. The use of cryptocurrencies means that victims also are highly unlikely to be able to reverse the transactions. It should be noted that two versions of the 'ELON MUSK Twitter Giveaway' scam have been identified so far. The two hoax pages present the same dubious claims but slightly different messages to do so.
