Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FTC to get complaints sent to the federal agency about crypto scams that pretend to be affiliated with Musk. We obtained 247 complaints, all filed between Feb. and Oct. of this year, and they’re filled with stories of people who believed they were watching ads for authentic crypto investments sanctioned by Musk on social media.
The ads sometimes featured the names of Musk’s various companies, like SpaceX, Tesla, and X, while other times they utilized Musk’s association with neo-fascist presidential candidate Donald Trump.
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Some people in the complaints believed they were talking directly with Musk, a sadly common story that has popped up in news reports before. But they weren’t talking with Musk, of course. They were communicating with scammers engaging in what’s called pig butchering—the name for a type of fraud popularized in the mid-2010s where scammers extract as much money as possible through flattery and promises of tremendous profits if the victim just “invests” where they’re told.
I saw one of these and it took me a second to realize it was a scam. I’m a spaceflight geek and as much as a tool as Musk is, there’s heavy overlap in spaceflight and SpaceX.
On Youtube there was a purported “live launch update” livestream. I was confused because I knew there were no launches scheduled that day of any kind much less SpaceX. What I saw was Musk on a stage outdoors apparently talking about a new SpaceX crypto product and the voice, which sounded exactly like Musk’s talked about giving away free crypto the only thing you had to do was buy it, then share you wallet info and Musk would double it.
Besides this smelling very suspect, I realized that there were never close shots when musk was talking, so you couldn’t see the lips match the words being said audibly and I knew it was a scam.
I can absolutely see how the greedy would get scammed by this.
I saw one of these too on YouTube – it easily popped up early on my home page.
I’d consider myself a tech savvy person and even then, this took a minute to spot the scam. I can totally see someone falling for it.
Really? The only way that could sound more like a scam is if there were a chyron at the bottom spelling out THIS IS A SCAM.
It sounds like a scam because I’m distilling all the things that told me it was a scam. I’m glad you can take what I’m tell you is a scam and say “yes thats a scam”. Congrats?
Musk also does stupid stuff that loses money. He’s (likely illegally) giving away money to buy votes in some states. Musk is also a known cryptobro. The idea that Musk would be giving away crypto to try to build influence or attention isn’t far fetched.
I mean, “give access” and “double your bitcoin” are somewhat textbook phrases for scams…
Although, I def. see how one can miss it at first. I remember one bank scam call where the thing that ultimately clued me in was a rather unprofessional response along the lines of “don’t call crying back to us” when I’ve said I’m a bit busy to go check the card or whatever they’ve asked to, while what should’ve done this in the 1st place was another textbooky “have u transfered any funds to Joe Shmoe”. Looking back, would’ve been funy AF to pull the Karen on them 🥲