Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary’s Twitter account was hacked on Thursday and started pushing a shady giveaway of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The famed investor's Twitter account, which is followed by more than 982,000 users, sent out multiple tweets about a giveaway of 5,000 BTC and 15,000 ETH, with an accompanying image listing 5,000 BTC and 5,000 ETH.
"Everyone who wants to get free crypto now has a chance here!" he said in a now-deleted tweet. The O’Leary Twitter account further claimed that it is not hacked and the giveaways are not a scam. It also falsely claimed that Mr. Wonderful said on CNBC that he will give away some cryptocurrencies for real.
The tweet provided a link for anyone to join the cryptocurrency giveaway scam event, prompting respondents to send their own digital asset funds first to verify their wallet address.
Notably, crypto giveaway scams are one of the most prevalent forms of scams in the industry. These often involve hacked accounts of famous people, politicians, celebrities, and companies that are used to promote fake giveaways.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, former CEO of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor, Binance CEO CZ, and other prominent figures are usually the targets of scammers, who try to impersonate them using fake accounts and promote their scams.
Notably, the scammer in the O’Leary giveaway used the same website they created for fake Tesla and Elon Musk giveaways. The website was also filled with grammatical errors and had the Tesla logo on top and was hosted on a website with the name Tesla in the URL.
O'Leary, who has become a vocal proponent of Web3 technology, has revealed recently that he has lost almost all of the $15 million the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX paid him to be its
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