According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), consumers have lost more than $2 million in cryptocurrency over the past six months – all of it to scammers posing as Elon Musk. Talk about the misery people go through.
According to the authority, scammers promise a guaranteed, high return or claim to multiply your money – promises that are always a scam, the FTC says.
The trend is nothing new; scammers have been trying to impersonate Elon Musk for years to cheat social media users out of crypto-currency. Usually, they use deceptive methods, i.e., their account picture shows Elon Musk and the account name is Elon Musk, with some minor mistake or misspelling.
They then pretended to be Musks and asked the victims to send them cryptocurrencies in a specific wallet in exchange for more later.
Despite Twitter's rules against such campaigns, as well as the fraudsters behind these fake accounts, moderators have a hard time cracking down on fraudsters, so if you look around the platform, you'll find a heap of Musk mockeries and crypto scams. Such scams have increased on Twitter, experts say.
Last October, the FTC told us that consumers might have lost more than $80 million in crypto scams. The average person lost around two thousand dollars, which is an annual increase of more than tenfold.
Source: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2021/05/spotting-cryptocurrency-investment-scams
