Bitcoin scammers hack Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk

On July 16, the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and many other important personalities were hacked by the Bitcoin scammers to launched bitcoin scam tweets just before 4:30 PM ET. Other major names in the list include Kanye West, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet. 

Twitter accounts of Apple, Uber, Square’s CashApp, and Coinbase were also hacked with the intent to post similar messages which contained a bitcoin wallet address that directed to the hackers.  

A series of scam tweets were launched that read, “I‘m feeling greatful, doubling all payments sent to my BTC address.” The tweet also contained a bitcoin address, presumably one associated with the hacker’s crypto wallet. 

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ account also posted a similar message at 1:48 pm PT but then it was quickly deleted. Immediately, a Twitter spokesperson said in a tweet that the team was “looking into the matter.” The company stated that it will share a statement soon.  

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Spammers earned more than $55,000

While some of the scam tweets were taken down by Twitter, subsequent tweets followed that read, “Feeling grateful doubling all payments sent to my BTC address! You send $1,000, I send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes.”

The BTC address of all the tweets from the hacked accounts was the same including on the tweets by the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’ Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. While Gemini claimed that its account was protected by two-factor authentication and the company used a strong password, the account was hacked into by the spammers that earned more than $55,000.

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