A Bitcoin holder just lost $1.14 million worth of the coin to a scam. The user sent 26.4 BTC to online scammers posing as MicroStrategy’s boss Michael Saylor in a fake giveaway.
26 Bitcoin Lost to a Fake Giveaway Scam
Whale Alert, a Twitter account that tracks large crypto transactions, first reported the scam. It described it as the single largest payment to a fake giveaway. The fraud was perpetrated through YouTube and a website, ms22.
🚔 A payment of 26 #BTC (1,124,191 USD) was just made to a confirmed Michael Saylor Giveaway scam!https://t.co/YNYRBLBt4P
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 15, 2022
According to Whale Alert, the Bitcoins were likely sent from a Coinbase wallet. Once the scammers received the funds, they disabled the website and the YouTube channel. Based on transaction records, the BTC was sent in five transactions.
This isn’t the first time that a scam like this would happen. In fact, it’s quite prevalent in the industry for illicit actors to use the identity of popular figures, agencies, and companies for theft.
Last year, impersonators of Elon Musk stole more than $2 million in a fake giveaway scam. The modus operandi is to ask individuals to send cryptocurrencies with the promise of doubling it for them.
Crypto Scammers Keep Evolving Their Strategies
While YouTube keeps trying to curb the use of its platform for scams, the scammers, however, are unrelenting as they continue to create more fake videos on the site. A similar occurrence…
