Elon Musk's followers fall victim to a cryptocurrency scam which promised Ethereum coins

The tweet reportedly asked the followers to send a small amount ether to his/her address in return for a larger amount of ether coins.

Tech2 News Staff|Mar 07, 2018, 12:31:12 IST

Cryptocurrency’s happy days seem to have been jinxed. After crypto jacking and crypto hacking, cryptocurrency scams is the latest buzzword that has been doing the rounds. Some Elon Musk fans learnt that the hard way.[caption id="attachment_4379845" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Representational image. Reuters.[/caption]According to a BBC report, an account posing as Elon Musk on Twitter — with the handle @elonmuskik — has reportedly scammed the Tesla founder’s fans.The fraud account used Elon Musk's Twitter profile photo and responded to a tweet sent out by SpaceX's official Twitter handle. The fraudster reportedly promised fans a giveaway of 3000 ETH (ether) and asked for 0.5-4.0 ETH in return.Interestingly, the impersonating account, by the looks of it, could mislead a user if they weren't too vigilant. For starters, the Twitter handle was not only wrong but also wasn't verified. This is a common modus operandi of these scammers.The fraudster never gave away any ether currency to whoever responded to him or her.Jսst fоr tоԁау I've ԁecіԁeԁ tо gіve аwау 3000 ЕТН tо mу fаոs.

But, the problem does not cease to exist. This tweet from this fake account was further amplified by bots, a flaw for which Twitter has received criticism, especially during 2016 US elections. Some of those bots were dormant since September 2017.Other celebrity accounts which have been involved in a similar scam are related to Ethereum cryptocurrency founder Vitalik Buterin.

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