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Several users have fallen victim to the Elon Musk Bitcoin giveaway scam on YouTube, as scammers have made thousands of dollars by deceiving people they can double their crypto funds.
Some of the scammers use Bitcoin addresses with names such as Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon Musk to deceive their victims.
The numbers of users who have been victims of the scam have grown in large numbers. The scam video promotes a scam that claims Elon Musk is giving away 5000 BTC. It is a simple one but it has still managed to deceive people into sending their funds in anticipation of a double return.
The scammers demand that people send Bitcoin to an address to immediately receive twice as much Bitcoin they send.
Fake addresses have received more than $2 million
Over the past month, Justin Lister, Chief Executive Officer of cybersecurity firm Adaptiv, has been monitoring Bitcoin delivered to certain addresses with names such as SpaceX, Tesla, and Elon Musk. According to Lister, the addresses include names such as 1Elonmusk and 1Musk, which are used to deceive users into believing the message is real.
He followed up 66 of such similar addresses and extended his findings at Bitcoinabuse.com, a database of Bitcoin addresses used by criminals and hackers. After gathering data from the website, he discovered the Elon Musk scam addresses have received a total of 214 BTC, which is over $2 million at present market rate.
Names of other popular figures also used in the scam
The scammers are not using only the name of Elon Musk to create their scam messages and promote bogus Bitcoin giveaways.
Other notable names used in their scam promotion include Richard Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad), Daymond John (FUBU Chief Executive Officer), Brian Armstrong (Coinbase chief executive), Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder), Eric Schmidt (former Google chief Executive), as the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates.
Experts have alerted the public on the dangers of sending Bitcoin to any who claims the funds would be doubled almost immediately. Bitcoin holders have been advised to keep their fund safe and report any bogus promotional campaign address to sites like Bitcoinabuse. The site also allows you to confirm the genuineness of a particular address and whether it has been reported as a scam.
At press time, the website has recorded 4644 reports within the past month, 689 in the past week, and 120 reports on the last day.
Another website known as ScamAlert, owned by Whale Alert, a popular blockchain monitor, offers a quick check on the genuineness of scam history of a particular address. “Our goal is to make blockchain safer for everyone by tracking and exposing criminals who abuse blockchain for illegal activities.” Scam Alert stated on its website.
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