Key Takeaways:
- According to recent research from Tenable, cryptocurrency fraudsters made $9 million through fraudulent YouTube live streams in October by promoting bogus bitcoin giveaways on social media.
- Scams using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Cardano, Ripple, and Shiba Inu have been reported to the cyber expose portal.
- The most successful scams were Bitcoin scams, which generated an average of $1.6 million per fraud and a total of $8.2 million.
According to new research, crypto fraudsters have ramped up their efforts to devise new ways to trick their victims, which shows that they are now documenting YouTube videos of coin industry leaders advocating bogus crypto giveaways.
These fraudsters hacked YouTube channels and collected at least $8.9 million in October alone through phony bitcoin offers.
The fraudsters used three main components to promote phony crypto giveaways, including the use of well-known personalities in the cryptocurrency sector, the rise in the value of cryptocurrencies in conjunction with noteworthy events, and the use of celebrities in the cryptocurrency area.
According to Tenable’s investigation, the scammers used YouTube live streams depicting significant personalities in the crypto sector to promote fraudulent giveaways, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Cardano, Ripple, and Shiba Inu.
Scammers leveraged outdated, irrelevant, and unconnected YouTube interview videos with prominent players in the crypto field such as Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin, Michael Sayer, and others, according to Tenable, while tweets were accompanying the video outline the bogus giveaway event.
Scams using Bitcoin raked in $8.2 million, while Ethereum scams brought in $413,000. Furthermore, they profited $239,000 from the popularity of SHIB.
According to the report, scammers generally have a special space in the video comment section where they promise to double the number of crypto donations submitted to their desired crypto wallet address.
The videos were created in such a way that they included an unrelated interview with a well-known individual. The videos had already been uploaded on YouTube. A phony tweet promoting the giveaway was also included in the video and a part promising viewers that if they sent an amount of the impacted cryptocurrency, it would be doubled.
“Scammers recognize that users place a lot of trust in influential voices so create fake videos featuring the founders and co-founders of cryptocurrencies as well as notable individuals associated with cryptocurrency companies or CEOs of companies who have promoted the use of and discussed the purchase of cryptocurrencies for their company balance sheets,” commented a spokesperson for Tenable.
According to Tenable Research, scammers also like to take advantage of new advances in the crypto sector to carry out their malicious duties. For example, the fraudsters hijacked many YouTube videos to promote the show’s bogus giveaway schemes and were attempting to steal more than $9 million around the time of Elon Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live and were able to do so.