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Twitter accounts of the wealthy and well-known—together with Elon Musk, Invoice Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Joe Biden—had been concurrently hijacked on Wednesday and used to push cryptocurrency scams.
As of three:58 PM California time, one pockets deal with used to obtain sufferer’s digital coin had obtained greater than $118,000, although it wasn’t clear all of it got here from individuals who fell for the rip-off. The bitcoin got here from 356 transactions that every one occurred over a couple of four-hour span on Tuesday. The pockets deal with appeared in tweets from a minimum of 15 accounts—some with tens of tens of millions of followers—that promoted fraudulent incentives to switch cash. No less than one different Bitcoin pockets was used within the mass rip-off.
“I’m giving again to all my followers,” one now-deleted tweet from Musk’s account mentioned. “I’m doubling all funds despatched to the Bitcoin deal with beneath. You ship 0.1 BTC, I ship 0.2 BTC again!” A tweet from the Bezos account mentioned the identical factor. “Everyone seems to be asking me to offer again, and now’s the time,” a Gates tweet mentioned. “I’m doubling all funds despatched to my BTC deal with for the following 30 minutes. You ship $1,000, I ship you again $2,000.
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