FREE now SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Make the most of your money by signing up to our newsletter fornow We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Thousands of fraudulent Twitter accounts have flooded the social media platform in the past days, fooling people into paying small donations to specific crypto wallets. Utilising the oldest trick in the book, the online scammers pretend to be a recognised figure of authority, offering big payouts for small initial investments. The scammers have so far mirrored the accounts of President Trump and Mr Musk as well as those of cyber security tycoon John McAfee and Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. One such scammer message posted in response to a genuine Elon Musk tweet, reads: “Hi guys! I'm donating 250 Ethereum to the ETH community! “First 250 transactions with 0.2 ETH sent to the address below will receive 1.0 ETH in the address the 0.2 ETH came from.

“0xB44ed0651F36995799A05fB05f0BaC77c989D296 “The promotion will last 24 hours! Hurry!” Since all transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are public, a quick wallet address search reveals that this scammer has already amassed more than $4,000 worth of Ethereum through the small 0.2 ETH donations. These scam messages always pop up in response to genuine tweets, giving a false impression of them being part of the original thread. Josh Emerson, a self-proclaimed Twitter bot hunter has exposed over 1,200 of the scammer accounts by Thursday alone.

GETTY•TWITTER Cryptocurrency owners have been warned against falling for bitcoin scams on Twitter

He told Express.co.uk: “It looks like just a run of the mill scam. “All of the new accounts are impersonating larger crypto personalities and then are boosted by bots.”

All of the new accounts are impersonating larger crypto personalities and then are boosted by bots Josh Emerson

“As far as I can tell it's a new thing over the last few days. “Looks like it started around February 1.” Thankfully some of the accounts have already been taken down but a large number of them are still online, and Mr Emerson said they are sprouting faster than Twitter can delete them.

TWITTER The online scammers ask for small crypto payments in exchange for bigger rewards

ETHERSCAN One of the Ethereum scammers has already collected over $4,000 worth of ETH tokens

Twitter users have now been urged to stay on the lookout for the fraudulent tweets and thankfully the telltale signs of a scam are easy to spot. Popular online hacker @TinkerSac warned: “Be Advised: ‘Jita Scams’ now hitting Twitter. “Scam poses as verified tweeps, responds to a popular tweet, asks ‘followers’ to send a small amount of cryptocurrency in return for a larger amount sent back. “Scam uses ‘typo spoof’ and has common language. Folks are falling for it.” Though at first glance the tweets might appear to be genuine, they all use badly botched variants of the of the verified @elonmusk Twitter handle. These include accounts such as @elonmusk_, @EL00NMUSK, @eellon_musk, @ElloonMusk and various other similar alterations.

Everything you need to know about bitcoin Mon, October 30, 2017 How to buy bitcoin: Everything you need to know about cryptocurrency wallets and bitcoin cash. Play slideshow Getty Images 1 of 13 Bitcoin is a new kind of money