According to a Sunday report published by Bleeping Computer, millions of dollars have been stolen with the help of fake endorsements from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Bogus videos promoting double-your-crypto scams have been making the rounds on YouTube, generating tens of thousands of views.
The report says that various YouTube channels are attempting to lure in victims with edited clips from the “The B Word” conference, which took place last year. Some fraudsters managed to rake in hundreds of dollars earlier this year.
Gullible users are being redirected to websites that encourage them to put their hard-earned money into giveaway scams. One YouTube channel promoting such a sham has more than a million followers, according to Bleeping Computer.
Alex DovbnyaIn order to make their sham seem more legitimate, fraudsters create bogus tables that supposedly show how other users managed to double their crypto with the help of their giveaway sham. In reality, they generated random data with the help of simple JavaScript code.
In 2020, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse filed a lawsuit against YouTube for failing to remove fake videos featuring his name. Last March, he ended up settling with the tech giant. YouTube claimed that it wasn’t responsible for what third parties were published on its platform.
Musk has also repeatedly complained about double-your-crypto scams that keep popping up on Twitter.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin