Criminals posing online as Bill Gates and Elon Musk scammed hundreds of gullible crypto users, proving that what usually sound too good to be true, is usually a scam.

While the internet is full of scammers that impersonate regular people to dupe unwitting netizens, there is a different breed of scammers that pose as celebrities or noteworthy figures in their sector of interest.

These scammers made over $5000 worth of Ethereum in just one night. But how did they do this? Quite simple, actually. They created fake accounts on Twitter of real celebrities, and then proceeded to spam the social network with messages of them giving away cryptocurrency for almost nothing.

If the users wanted to participate, you had to send a small amount of Ethereum to the wallet address specified in the tweet, and the crooks promised that the users would receive their sum multiplied by 10, being part of a giveaway. The fake profiles had similar messages, only the amount and wallet addresses were different.

The accounts that received the most funds where the fake profiles of John McAfee, Vitalik Buterin, and Elon Musk.

The scam made $5000 worth of Ethereum in the past 24 hours, as naive crypto users that were looking to make some quick money through a giveaway. The sum could be higher, as not all the Twitter accounts could be found because they have probably been banned, says Bleeping Computer.

The campaign started almost 2 weeks ago, but hardly produced any funds. But last night is when the ether started to pool in. Unfortunately, since cryptocurrency transactions are very hard to trace (not impossible as some might think) the scammers cannot be detected. These accounts can be spotted out, as they have added or missing letters in their name.

If you are new to the whole crypto trading andinvestment scene, pay extra attention with whom you interact online. Double check everything from the person involved to the campaign, see what other users had to say about it, or other things that might prove its legitimacy. There are all sorts of phishing method and scams that are lurking around, just waiting to prey on inexperienced crypto users.