Investors have lost over $50 million over the last six months to scammers posing as the Chief Executive of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, as reported by the Federal Trade Commission.
In the last two years, there have been a number of fraudsters impersonating the billionaire investor Elon Musk, offering tantalizing propositions to investors for cryptocurrency with the promise of lump sum returns on their investment, reported by The Verge.
Victims of fraud were deceived by fake Twitter accounts posing as Elon Musk, using the same avatar on profile and often times misspelling Musk’s username. Some have even included the blue tick in their username which signifies that the user has been verified by Twitter.
Nearly 7,000 consumers have lost $80 million from October to March as victims of scammers impersonating Musk. Bitcoin investors and other altcoin users such as Dogecoin were users were targeted by scammers. As reported by the FTC $1,900 was lost, as reported by the FTC.
A spokesperson for the FTC showed emails from over 133 consumers, complaining they have been scammed by the imposters. According to the complaints, some of the people had previously watched ads on YouTube with prompts alerting them of giveaways from Elon Musk.
The spokesperson further revealed some of the people responded to tweets and mistook the impersonating accounts for Elon Musk. The giveaways offered to multiply all Bitcoin investments to a specific digital wallet address and promised large returns. Tesla and Musk representatives did not respond straight away to the scenario on Monday.
Tesla had previously claimed to have bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Musk announced that Tesla will accept Bitcoin payment in March, causing the prices of BTC to skyrocket by 10%.
However, this month Musk announced that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin payments due to environmental concerns, stating Bitcoin mining consumes fossil fuels and damages the environment. This has contributed largely to the crypto crash we are currently experiencing.
