An anonymous user sent 10 BTC to scammers, who promised to double the amount sent from Elon Musk’s fake Twitter account. It is reported by the BBC .

The interlocutor of the publication followed the cybercriminals’ link in the comments to the publication of this chapter of Tesla. On a fraudulent website, he was asked to double the amount from 0.1 BTC to 20 BTC.

After making sure that the link was placed from a verified account, the investor began to think about the amount of the transaction: 5 BTC or 10 BTC.

Take it to the maximum, I thought, this is clearly true. So I sent 10 BTC, ”said the anonymous author.

The site promised that the funds would be received within 20 minutes – a special timer was counting down.

The user updated his wallet twice a minute in anticipation of a doubled amount, but never received bitcoins.

“I realized that this is all a big deception. […] I thought I had just thrown away a critical amount for my family, money for early retirement and for all the future holidays of my children. I went upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed to tell my wife. I woke her up and said that I had made a big mistake, a really big mistake, ”he added.

The victim of the fraud wrote for several hours to the website’s e-mail and to the fake Elon Musk on Twitter, hoping to get back at least some of what he had lost.

According to the analytical service Whale Alert, 2021 became a record year in terms of the amount of losses from fake cryptocurrency distributions. In less than three months, scammers stole $ 18 million against $ 16 million for the entire 2020.

As a reminder, Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of the IOHK company behind Cardano, has threatened a class action lawsuit against YouTube and Twitter over cryptocurrency fraud on the platforms.

Ripple has previously filed a similar lawsuit against YouTube. The reason was the fraudulent distribution of the XRP token, in which the CEO of the company Brad Garlinghouse often appeared.