The past week was an opportunity for many Bitcoin buyers to escape the bear market, but it was also an opportunity for long-term holders to buy the dip. For the altcoin market, it was an opportunity for investors to also buy the altcoin dip, but just around the corner were scammers who also had the opportunity of playing their way into the minds of unsuspecting cryptocurrency users, and making away with millions.
Scammers who always seem to have their eyes peeled out for a major event to tap into the market, were successful last week when they impersonated the Billionaire Elon Musk, who had been making rounds in the cryptocurrency industry for most of the week.
Following the highly anticipated Saturday Night Live performance from Elon Musk, it was reported that $5 million worth of DOGE was snatched by scammers who were said to have started a live stream geared towards viewers who were searching for the SNL performance with Musk in it.
The fraudsters lured their victims to websites by adding links to the YouTube video. Clicking on the link sent victims to a page convincing them that the billionaire was giving away millions of dollars in Dogecoin. Their message read “Elon Musk has devoted 500,000,000 DOGE to be distributed to all DOGE holders. Anybody can get some, just visit the website.”
The popular money doubling scam was employed by the fraudsters, who asked their victims to make Doge transfers in return for double the amount paid. A whopping $9.7 million Dogecoin which was worth $5 million at the time, was realized by the scammer’s address, which was traced by the U.S Federal Trade Commission.
The Federal Trade Commission in the United States has dug deep into the matter and disclosed that in the past six months, almost 7,000 victims lost over $80 million worth of cryptocurrency to internet scammers.
The coronavirus pandemic has seemingly worsened the situation for investors, as scammers are constantly taking advantage of the lockdown and the increased amount of internet users amid new and uninformed cryptocurrency investors.
It is important to keep in mind that most of the rising scams are giveaway scams, which were just as popular last year when scammers impersonated the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and many other big names. Within the last six months, $2 million worth of cryptocurrencies has reportedly been stolen from scammers who impersonated Musk.
