The British military’s Twitter with 363K followers retweeted various posts advertising non-fungible token (NFT) scams before they were taken out by Twitter., Every feature of that account was changed to look like NFT collections including the account name, profile picture, and cover image.
Their Youtube account with over 177K subscribers, was renamed “Ark Invest.” Again crypto content was uploaded by the scammers— four live videos promoting crypto giveaway scams were uploaded to the account.
They also publicized that for each bitcoin or ether shipped off them, one will get twice the amount back. The videos included Tesla CEO Elon Musk, previous Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood.
A US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) analyst warned about “giveaway scams” in May 2022, which often appear to be “sponsored by celebrities or other known figures in the cryptocurrency space, that promise to immediately multiply the cryptocurrency you send.” It was later realised by victims that they were sending crypto directly to the scammer’s wallet.
Later in June the FTC claimed that over $1 billion in cryptocurrency was lost by more than 46,000 people since last year. Crypto giveaway scams include Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak best besides Musk, Dorsey, and Wood.