Twitter Crypto Scammers Now With Verified Accounts

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Sead Fadilpašić

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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June 26, 2023 06:53 EDT

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Crypto scammers on Twitter are nothing new. Many are imitating public accounts of crypto-related personas, going as far as making their usernames look almost exactly the same, and asking for money. While some of the people imitated this way warned that only they have had their accounts verified by the social network, this is simply not enough anymore.

Last week, fraudsters had copied the accounts of the Tron foundation, a non-profit organization behind TRON cryptocurrency, and its founder, Justin Sun, according to a Buzzfeed article. The fraudulent account went as far as to pin the very same tweet as the original – ironically, the pinned tweet said that the Foundation knew about the counterfeit accounts and to look for the verified checkmark next to the account names.

But a verified counterfeit account emerged and asked for money replying to a tweet from Justin Sun’s real account. It claimed to be giving away ETH, and that people should send it a certain amount and that they would get a bigger amount back.

Buzzfeed also found that the fake account holders hacked the account of a verified nonprofit, changed the names and “started scamming away”.

Twitter rules mandate that accounts lose their verified status when they change their names, several fraudulent accounts have managed to maintain their verification badges. Tron is not the only victim of verified frauds: Binance, an exchange, has also been copied, although the scammers do not seem to be really trying to make their account look believable – the username has nothing to do with the real account, for example.

The issue is drawing attention from everyone, having reached even Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, who replied to an increasing amount of demands that the issue be looked into by tweeting simply, “Yes, we discovered this and are fixing process.”