Scammers in cryptocurrency are nothing new. More and more fraudsters are taking to Twitter to spread their messages through illegal means with the latest being impersonations. They are using celebrity Twitter accounts to scam unsuspecting civilians. On one of the latest coups, criminals took control of a verified Twitter account.

The main reason why people should verify their account is to protect them from such a scam. A hacker recently tried to hack “Almost Human’s” account a television show cancelled after one season. In doing so, the hacker tried to mimic the account of Justin Sun, a crypto entrepreneur and also founder of TRON. Scammers took control of the account, which was in the hands of Fox. They then changed the Twitter account’s name to Justin’s, and retweeted on the account many times.

Posting Incentives And Giveaways

The scammers were posting giveaway invitations which seem to be one of the most recent ways to scam people through the fake accounts. Their primary focus was on Bitcoin and Ethereum giveaways. Due to this reason, there have been attempts by scammers to hack some celebrity Twitter accounts. When the victims try to reclaim their account, the scammers ask for cryptocurrency as a payment. The money vanishes and so do the scammers. Some believe that the scammers are just looking for quick cash to get things done abroad.

Why They Are Targeting Twitter Accounts

One of the reasons why the scammers are using Twitter is because they can change the display names, even if the identifiers remain the same. All a user needs to do is change the display name, and the same will show on the main pages. They can then easily use them to do anything they want. Most victims will not bother about the Twitter identifiers since they only appear in the URL. These URL’s are the ones that lead people to landing pages that contain fake information and transactions that lure them in.

There has been a use of such scam activities on BitStamp through Charlie Lee’s account on Litecoin. The target was the Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin who later had to change the name to Vitalik ‘Not giving away ETH’ Buterin,” after asking Twitter to intervene.