Fake Bitcoin Giveaway Cons Yet Another Innocent Man

The repeated increase in price of Bitcoin coupled with prominent names investing in it has made the token vulnerable to scams. Elon Musk is seen tweeting about the cryptocurrency a lot and then it was also revealed that Tesla invested $1.5 billion in the token. This has given rise to Bitcoin giveaway fraudulent schemes using Musk’s name to con investors and users. BBC recently reported about the latest German man to have fallen in the trap set by these Bitcoin scammers.

Sebastian lost 10 Bitcoins to one of these Bitcoin giveaway schemes that fraudulently used Elon Musk’s name. The worth of his 10 Bitcoins calculate to approximately $600,000 at the current Bitcoin rate of $59,115.

Revealing details about this incident, Sebastian told that it was a twitter notification late one evening that led him to the scam giveaway. The notification was apparently one of the cryptic tweets of Musk that he wasn’t able to understand. In an attempt to decode the tweet, Sebastian read the comments under it and some of these comments advertised the Bitcoin giveaway.

The 42-year-old followed the comments about the giveaway and ultimately a link directed him to a website, which in his words was professional-looking. On the website the Bitcoin giveaway seemed to be going all out. The link and comments were posted by a bogus Twitter account of Elon Musk, however, Sebastian didn’t recognize that at that point.

From the looks of it, the Bitcoin giveaway seemed to be advertised by Musk’s Tesla group. It welcomed individuals to send them anywhere between 0.1 Bitcoin to 20 Bitcoins, that would be doubled and returned to the participants. To make the scheme more believable a timer was set up that was tallying down to the end of the promotion.

BBC detailed that Sebastian counter-checked the blue verification badge in front of Elon Musk’s name. Afterwards he contemplated over how many Bitcoins of the 10 he had, he should send.

To his ultimate bad luck, Sebastian ended up sending all his coins 10 Bitcoins because the scheme looked that real to him.

As the minutes on the timer ticked, Sebastian refreshed his screen waiting to receive his Bitcoins doubled. During this he came across another tweet that Musk posted and felt confident and reassured that the scheme was legit. However, as the timer reached zero, realization hit Sebastian that he had been conned. He was swindled out of all his savings and dreams. Sebastian felt like he had thrown away his early retirement fund and the future holidays he had planned with his family.

As digital coins gain popularity, crypto giveaway scams also rise in number. Reportedly, these scams have already made up to $18 million this year. In comparison the whole of 2020 saw the giveaway scams generating $16 million.