The official Twitter account of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Venezuela has been hacked in order to promote an XRP scam.
It is advertising “a big event” with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse that is supposed to take place an hour from now. Its tweet encloses a link that is supposed to bait potential victims into sending their crypto.
Prior to that, other verified accounts with significant following were compromised in order to promote the same scam.
Tomiwabold OlajideXRP giveaway scams have been popping up on social media for years. In April 2020, Ripple went as far as filing a lawsuit against video hosting giant YouTube for failing to prevent and take down such scams. The company claimed that YouTube’s failure to crack down on fraudulent XRP videos damaged its reputation.
Last September, YouTube reached a settlement agreement with Ripple last September. The two parties vowed to work together in order to crack down on cryptocurrency scams.
Last May, XRP scammers managed to hack the official account of Spain's oldest law enforcement agency.
Social media are still teeming with cryptocurrency scams after all these years. Scammers typically target verified accounts in order to give credence to their fraudulent offerings.
On Saturday, the official YouTube channel of the South Korean government was hacked and renamed to “SpaceX Invest.” It was promoting a cryptocurrency scam with a live broadcast featuring Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
In March, a slew of verified Twitter accounts started promoting a fake Ape Coin airdrop, defrauding gullible users of more than $1 million.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin