Altcoin News: Cryptocurrency Holders Are Again Attracted to Fraudulent Schemes Mentioning John McAfee and Tesla

June 24, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

They are back. Fraudulent campaigns aimed at weaning cryptocurrency assets from their owners again flooded the network along with the increase in the price of Bitcoin draws the attention of Bleeping Computer.

The researcher of security issues under the nickname “Frost” in a conversation with the portal said that scam schemes offering free distribution of cryptocurrencies in recent days are increasingly found on Twitter. Potential participants are invited to send to the scammers' address, for example, 0.05 BTC to get 5 BTC, or 0.5 ETH to get 50 ETH.

Below are two similar schemes mentioning Tesla and John McAfee.

Image credit: BLEEPINGCOMPUTER

On such pages, fraudsters place a counter, which should inform the user about the amount of remaining cryptocurrency in the framework of the current campaign, and a list of transactions allegedly sent in real time to the addresses of the participants.

Image credit: BLEEPINGCOMPUTER

To attract users, fraudsters use Twitter accounts, where, on behalf of Elon Musk, John McAfee, and other celebrities, they post links that are suggested to go for more information.

Most often, this is a fake page that simulates blog posting on the popular Medium platform and has a title like “Elon Mask — Official distribution of ETH and BTC”, as well as containing a link to the direct page of the fraudulent distribution.

According to Bleeping Computer, in the scheme mentioning McAfee, four transactions with a total volume of $310 were sent to the address provided by Ethereum, and Tesla brought 0.418 BTC to scammers. However, it is impossible to say for sure whether this cryptocurrency belonged to the victims or to the organizers themselves, who could thus try to make it more convincing.

Be aware of scammers!

Author: Marko Vidrih