Fake YouTube Account Impersonates Ripple CEO, Promotes Fake XRP Airdrop

A fake YouTube account impersonating Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has been spotted.

According to a tweet on the matter, the channel is being used to promote a scam regarding XRP airdrops.

@YouTube @bgarlinghouse @Ripple @JoelKatz someone has created a YT account as Brad Garlinghouse and is using this video to promote an xrp airdrop scam. @YouTube you need to shut this down #XRP #xrpthestandard #Ripple pic.twitter.com/T1fZzkHg7f

— Andy_SPQR ⚡️ (@AndySpqr) March 23, 2020

With 276K subscribers and multiple tens of thousands of views per video, it’s likely that tons of people have actually fallen for this scam. After all, the cryptocurrency space is rife with things like this that prey on those less knowledgeable about the technology.

The Twitter user tagged Brad Garlinghouse, YouTube, Ripple, and other prominent relevant names in an attempt to take this down. As of this writing, there doesn’t seem to be a response by any of them.

Overall, users all over the cryptocurrency space have fallen to less-obvious scams such as these. Recently, a former United States senator was involved in an airdrop scam that promised big returns on an investment that just wasn’t realistic.

Elsewhere, two citizens in Canada were caught doing something similar, scamming users via cryptocurrency in an easy way to make quick cash.

It’s unfortunate that this is the state of things right now, but with such a nascent industry, users are bound to suffer from scams such as this. It will prevent some in the mainstream from adopting cryptocurrency and blockchain, but that will eventually improve the technology (and its security) improves.