Twitter has been swamped in recent years with crypto scammers using Elon Musk’s image to swindle unsuspecting investors. These fraudsters used Twitter accounts that were free to conduct their scams. But over the past week, I’ve noticed a new tactic the scammers are using on Twitter: They’re buying paid ads. And they’re even promising that big spenders could win a trip to Mars or even a Neuralink brain chip, all thanks to Elon Musk.

I first noticed a paid ad for crypto using the Twitter CEO’s photo late last week, but assumed it was an anomaly. Surely, I thought, Twitter must have processes for making sure scam artists aren’t using the social media platform to buy ads, especially when they’re using the current owner’s photo and fake tweets in just a nakedly deceptive way.

But then I noticed another crypto scam using Musk’s photo on MondayAnd another one in the morning. One mistake is not a problem, three is the norm. Twitter profited from cryptocurrency scams, regardless of what is going on behind closed doors.

These scam advertisements and links can be quite convincing in many ways. For starters, I didn’t see any glaring spelling errors, one of the most common things I’ve come across while studying crypto scams over the years. It might seem like a low bar to clear, but honestly it’s the small things that set the successful scammers apart from the rest of the pack.

Another paid ad on Twitter looked like CoinTelegraph. This is a legitimate crypto news outlet as shown in the screenshot above. Needless to say, Musk has never tweeted “What we need is Neuralink Crypto Token.”

Also, the ads linked to an advertisement that showed a deepfake Musk talking about a Neuralink-branded Crypto coin. And while Musk has promoted Bitcoin and Dogecoin in the past, he’s never launched his own coin for Neuralink, Tesla, SpaceX or any of his other brands.

“I’m here to tell you about the Neuralink crypto token, the cryptocurrency that will change the world forever,” the fake Musk says in the video.

“With this token, you have a unique opportunity to invest in the future of brain-machine interfaces,” the fake Musk continues.

I’ve uploaded the crypto scammer’s video to YouTube so you can see it for yourself without visiting the site. I’ve also added a large text disclaimer that the video is fake, but those elements in the upper corners, including the Wall Street Journal logo and the word “live,” were there originally. A clip taken from Musk’s interview in December 2021 was used to create the deepfake video.

A user must create an account in order to attempt to buy tokens from the …read more

Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron