A User Lost $1.14 Million to Michael Saylor Giveaway Scam

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Key Takeaways:

  • A bitcoin user lost $1.14 million to online thieves impersonating MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. 
  • The user sent the equivalent of 26.4 bitcoins (BTC) to an address confirmed as a bitcoin scam by crypto tracking service Whale Alert.
A User Lost $1.14 Million To Michael Saylor Giveaway Scam
A User Lost $1.14 Million to Michael Saylor Giveaway Scam

A bitcoin user lost $1.14 million to online thieves impersonating MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. The user sent the equivalent of 26.4 bitcoins (BTC) to an address confirmed as a bitcoin scam by crypto tracking service Whale Alert. “This scam received the single largest payment ever to a fake giveaway,” Whale Alert tweeted, describing it as a “nightmare come true.” “We suspect this payment was made through a Coinbase address.”

According to the Whale Alert, the theft took place on this website and on YouTube, both of which are “confirmed” scam platforms used by con artists to impersonate Saylor. The YouTube channel has since been taken down, and a visit to the website [Do Not Click] returns an error message. According to a record of the payments, the 26.4 BTC was sent to the primary scam address in five transactions. The loot is worth $1.14 million at current market prices.

The giveaway scam impersonates celebrities such as Michael Saylor to trick people into sending them bitcoin. They promise to multiply the cryptocurrency that investors send in the giveaway, but instead steal the money. Responding to the Whale Alert announcement, Saylor said, “At least 489 of these scams were launched on YouTube last week. We report them every 15 minutes, and they are taken down after a few hours, but the scammers just launch more.” 

Michael Saylor Youtube Scam
Michael Saylor YouTube Scam

Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, has long been a firm supporter of bitcoin. His company has purchased 124,391 BTC since August 2020, making it the largest holding of any publicly traded entity. This is the latest move involving Saylor. Someone sent nearly 3 BTC ($179,000) to a different giveaway impersonating the MicroStrategy CEO in November. 

Scammers don’t just pretend to be Saylor. They also impersonate Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as well as government agencies and well-known corporations. According to a 2020 report from Whale Alert, cybercriminals are finding it very easy to dupe people out of their bitcoin because their schemes have become unbelievably professional and aggressive.

It concluded after analyzing hundreds of thousands of data points that “crypto crime pays.” Quite a bit.” This is primarily due to the fact that the bitcoin scam business is almost risk-free, with perpetrators having a very low chance of being caught. According to Whale Alert, it monitors 9,214 scam websites and 92,955 fraudulent crypto addresses. It has tracked over $803 million in stolen digital assets worldwide to date.

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Chaahat Girdhar
Chaahat Girdhar

I'm Chaahat Girdhar, a journalist by profession who's turning her dreams into vision and vision into reality. I'm curious and have an appetite for gaining new knowledge. So I'm looking forward to learning things in the better way possible.

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