Elon Musk's Name Used With Verified Twitter Profile Of Hacked Indonesian Consulate To Dupe Unsuspecting Users Of Bitcoin

Scammers pretending to be Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk appear to have taken over a Twitter account belonging to the Consulate General of Indonesia in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. 

What Happened: The verified account belonging to the diplomatic outpost on the Malaysian part of Borneo had its name changed to “Elon Musk.”

Screenshot From The Affected Twitter Account

The account shared several messages that resemble typical cryptocurrency scams. 

Examples Of The Messages Posted By Elon Musk Impersonators

These messages include a link to a supposed 5000 Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) giveaway featuring an image of the Tesla CEO. 

Screenshot Of The Scam

Also included was a message, which read “We here at Tesla HQ came up with a nice idea: to hold a special airdrop event of 5000 BTC for all crypto fans!”

The scammers posted three additional Blogspot links, which lead to yet another purported message from Musk.

A Screenshot Of The Included Blogspot Link

“All persons are able to participate, including those in the United States. All wallets and exchanges are eligible!”

See Also: How To Buy Bitcoin (BTC)

Why It Matters: Benzinga noted that the penultimate link included in the scam page leads to a QR code and a Bitcoin address where the scammers demand a transaction of between 0.02 BTC ($929) to 10 BTC ($464,814) from their intended victims and promised 0.20 ($9,296) to 100 ($4,648,140) BTC back in return.
Screenshot Of the Scam BTC Address

At press time, analysis of the scam BTC address included on the page revealed that the wallet contained 0.07561428 BTC ($3,513.10) and the same amount was received in 10 transactions.

Benzinga has sought a response from the Embassy of Indonesia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in relation to the scam but didn't receive a response as of publication time.

This week, it was reported that Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-creator Vitalik Buterin was impersonated on Instagram and those scammers engaged an audience of over 570,000 people with a staking scam.

Cryptocurrency scammers made nearly $8 billion from rug pulls alone in 2021. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission said that Elon Musk impersonators stole over $2 million in scams.

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