A German man has shared his story about how he fell for the Elon Musk bitcoin giveaway scam. He lost 10 bitcoins to the scam, worth almost $600K at the current price. “I’d just thrown away the game changer for my family, my early retirement fund, and all the upcoming holidays with my kids,” he revealed.
Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Giveaway Scams Continue to Dupe Investors
With the price of bitcoin repeatedly hitting record highs, Tesla investing $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, and Elon Musk’s various crypto tweets, there has been a rise in bitcoin giveaway scams using the Tesla executive’s name. The BBC reported this week that a German man from Cologne, Sebastian, lost 10 bitcoins to an Elon Musk bitcoin giveaway scam. At the current BTC price of $59,115, based on data from markets.Bitcoin.com, his bitcoins are worth about $600K.
One night, after his wife went to bed, Sebastian received a Twitter notification that Musk had tweeted “Dojo 4 Doge.” This was on Feb. 21. While wondering what it meant, he noticed some comments below the tweet about a bitcoin giveaway. The 42-year-old followed the link posted on Twitter to what he described as a professional-looking website where a BTC giveaway looked to be in full swing. The comments and link were posted by a fake Elon Musk’s Twitter account, but Sebastian did not realize that at the time.
The BTC giveaway appeared to be run by Musk’s Tesla team, inviting people to send them any amount from 0.1 bitcoin to 20 bitcoins, and the team would send back double the amount. There was also a timer counting down to the end of the promotion.
“Sebastian double-checked the verification logo next to Elon Musk’s name,
