Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary’s Twitter account was hacked on Thursday and used to promote a bitcoin and ethereum giveaway scam. The scammers claimed that Mr. Wonderful is giving away 5,000 bitcoins and 15,000 ether, and anyone can participate.
Kevin O’Leary’s ‘Fake’ Bitcoin and Ether Giveaways
The official Twitter account of Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, began promoting bitcoin and ethereum giveaways on Thursday morning. The account tweeted stating that O’Leary has made a lot of money from cryptocurrency in recent years and has decided to give away 5,000 bitcoins and 15,000 ether. The tweet also provides a link for anyone to join the cryptocurrency giveaway scam event.
O’Leary’s Twitter account further claimed that it is not hacked and that the giveaways are not a scam. She also falsely claimed that Mr. Wonderful said last night on CNBC that she would be giving up some real cryptocurrencies.
The link provided in the first tweet takes investors to a website claiming to be the official site of the O’Leary bitcoin and ether giveaway. “Everyone can participate, including those in the United States,” the website details. Two more links are provided: one is to participate in the BTC raffle while the other is to participate in the ETH give a present.
Twitter removed the fake giveaway posts within hours of posting.
Crypto giveaway scams have gone mainstream on social media
Cryptocurrency giveaway scams are widespread on various social media platforms, including Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Scammers often hack into the accounts of famous people, politicians, celebrities, and companies and use them to promote their fake giveaways. Elon Musk and his companies Tesla and spacex often appear in these scams.
In the O’Leary giveaway, the scammer evidently reused the same website he created for the fake Tesla and Elon Musk giveaways. As well as comments on O’Leary’s giveaway site thanking Musk for sending them some BTCthe bitcoin and ether giveaway pages for the Shark Tank star have the Tesla logo at the top and were hosted on a website with the name Tesla in the URL.
In July 2020, a large number of Twitter accounts were hacked to promote a bitcoin giveaway, including those belonging to Apple, Google, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Floyd Mayweather, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, Mr. Beast, Uber and Warren Buffett. More recently, the Pakistani politician Imran KhanThe Instagram account of was used to promote a giveaway scam featuring Musk, and the british armyThe official YouTube and Twitter accounts were compromised in July to promote a bitcoin giveaway.
O’Leary was recently criticized by the crypto community for defending former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. they paid him on $15 million to become the spokesperson for the crypto exchange. After FTX’s collapse, O’Leary said that Bankman-Fried is a brilliant cryptocurrency trader and will back you again if you have another company.
What do you think about cryptocurrency giveaway scams? Let us know in the comments section.
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