Fake Elon Musk crypto giveaway scams flood TikTok

Bad actors are now turning to the video-sharing platform to scam people by pretending to be crypto giveaways from celebrities.

TikTok is being flooded with fake posts pretending to be crypto giveaways from Elon Musk hourly, BleepingComputer first revealed. According to the report, malicious videos contain a deep fake interview with Elon Musk for Fox News, promoting a fake crypto giveaway.

The report notes the majority of scam videos use similar website domains such as bitoxies[.]com, moonexio[.]com, altgetxio[.]com, cratopex[.]com. Despite the various domains, most of them utilize the same scam template, pretending to be an investment platform, BleepingComputer says.

To participate in the giveaway, scammers are luring users to register on the website and enter a promo code shared on TikTok. The website pretends to deposit Bitcoin (BTC) into the user’s wallet by entering the code.

However, to withdraw the crypto, scammers require victims to activate their accounts first by depositing 0.005 BTC (worth around $132 as of press time). Moreover, scammers also prompt users to enter KYC information to process the withdrawal. Once scammers get what they want, they cut all ties.

As crypto.news earlier reported, scammers are wasting no time trying to deceive users on multiple social media platforms. On July 8, the decentralized finance platform Wombex Finance shared an image of an imposter on Threads pretending to be associated with the project.

Wombex promptly alerted users, cautioning them that scammers could potentially operate the account since their project was not on the Threads platform.