{Beware}:Fake Elon Musk giveaway and how someone fall for the trick

[Baofeng]

Ok, for those who are saying that this is an old trick and no one is going to fall for this trick. Let me show you some proof. I will share you someone from reddit who admittedly fall for it:

I stupidly lost ~$3000 in a crypto currency scam.

I am an idiot.

I was browsing Twitter and saw a post that appeared to be Elon Musk tweeting about a "New Years Crypto Party Giveaway". I navigated to the website in the tweet and it appeared that Elon Musk was giving away crypto and all you had to do was send in some crypto to verify your wallet address and they would send back what you sent plus up to double what you sent in back. In the moment everything looked legit to me and it seemed that there was a limited amount of time that this would last so I stupidly and frantically rushed to my CoinBase account and sent 0.4BTC or around $3000 USD. Immediately after I sent the money I got scared and regretted not doing more verification on my end to verify the giveaway. Low and behold after only a little digging it became very clear that I just got scammed.

Here was the tweet I saw: https://twitter.com/Eric77461769/status/1213122989480271877?s=20

The website in the tweet was https://muskfun.info/ and it appeared to redirect to a legit Medium Article by Elon Musk. I then clicked the Bitcoin giveaway link in the article and it took me here: https://muskfun.info/btc/

The final site I went to is where I was instructed to send the Bitcoin. It looked legit to me at the time and there was a live log of transactions. But had I looked just a little deeper I would have realized so many signs that this was a scam.


    I never checked Elon Musks Official Twitter Account to validate that he made this tweet. I just looked at the screenshot that someone else fabricated for this scam. Initially I was a little skeptical but figured I would checkout the website anyway. Elon has been known to do some crazy things.

    The URL took me to a convincing clone of a Medium Article with Elon Musk as the author but it was actually not a redirect as the URL still said https://muskfun.info/ which in its self is a suspicious website name that should have tipped me off. All the comments were raving about how this worked but they were obviously doctored as well.

    The final website was the same as the Medium article except it had /btc at the end.

    Countless other things I should have noticed but did not.

I'm upset that I lost my money but I could have lost a lot more. I'm mostly just embarrassed. I'm a Software Developer at a large tech company and even used to work at Geek Squad so I am very familiar with these kind of scams. I never thought something like this would happen to me because I consider myself very tech savvy consumer.

I did some Google searching to see if there was any way for me to get my money back through any legal means or by reporting fraud to Coinbase but as I guessed with Crytpo you are pretty much out of luck.

Thanks for listening to my story. Feel free to laugh at my expense. Learn from my mistake. If anyone knows how to give this scammer payback feel free to let me know how!


EDIT: Here is the log of my transaction: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e806b41205e82452768d1bd7fded2b7e2cfdcd976e469daf07d7a8520f98a930

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ejjrp9/i_stupidly_lost_3000_in_a_crypto_currency_scam/

[Scam Alert] Elon Musk Fake Giveaway. by @ScamVirus

[1715432539]

1715432539

[1715432539]

1715432539

[1715432539]

1715432539

[GreatArkansas]

Nothing new in some fake giveaways before in twitter when some famous crypto twitter accounts, like crypto youtubers, crypto influencers or some crypto developer/founders.

I feel sorry for that person who falls in that fake giveaway. That's difficult for every people who are aiming for easy money. $3,000 is quite huge money, that is almost my 5 years fee rent for my room.

This could be a lesson for everyone, thanks for sharing.

[Coyster]

Can it be anything more than just greed, there are some scams that are probably more difficult to detect than some, but the moment it comes to send X to receive Y, anyone who falls for that was just trying to ride their luck and double their money quickly, even though their heart must have muttered to them of how impossible it is. How can a giveaway still request for you to give to them first, what then makes it a giveaway  

I feel sorry for that person who falls in that fake giveaway.

TBH, I don't!

[Chikito]

I found more "Elon musk" still online

Code:

https://elongive.com/
http://musk.press

Let's see the relation of elongive

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/80.211.151.60/relations


A lot of phishing domain related to elongive, we have to report those domains https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en
And IP's https://www.abuseipdb.com/tools/subnetcalc

Code:

https://muskfun.info/

Have relation: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/54.210.115.107/relations

Code:

mozilla.org.mx 
http://ethereumdrop.com/
thebravebrowser.com

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/42aec691302c40df4667ba2ede3ce4b93cac83e47345d1c54032d4e1da72283e/detection

We should report all fake and phishing, don't ignore it, let's save people by the scammer

[Lucius]

I stupidly lost ~$3000 in a crypto currency scam.

I am an idiot.

I'm upset that I lost my money but I could have lost a lot more. I'm mostly just embarrassed. I'm a Software Developer at a large tech company and even used to work at Geek Squad so I am very familiar with these kind of scams. I never thought something like this would happen to me because I consider myself very tech savvy consumer.

We can briefly describe this case as an idiot move (which he himself admits), and to make the situation even worse he is "a Software Developer at a large tech company" who is "very familiar with these kind of scams". Really unbelievable, if this is true he didn't deserve to lose just $3000 but a lot more, and if I were his boss he would have gotten an immediate dismissal from the company. If he is able to make such a financial loss to himself, what damage can he do to the company?

Imagine a situation where someone who claims to be working for the company is contacted him ask for some code, he would probably pass it on because he's not aware of the fact that phishing/fake sites/e-mails/twitter are common things these days.

[DdmrDdmr]

It’s rather dumb to fall for this, and even more so when the person claims to be tech savy and aware of this type of scam. Simply the backlog of similar cases we’ve read over the past is enough to stop and not proceed any further (as if life experience alone wasn’t enough to read through it). It does seem pretty inconceivable that he did not stop when looking over the fake dynamic TX log on the scam site, and seeing that you cannot really retrieve any of the data shown on screen (which is partial).

Can’t really say anything in his defence, and the only good outcome is that at least he wrote a well versed text on the matter, that still will not hinder the next potential victim who will believe that he is smarter than all that.

Note: The seem to be using a different raddress today; at least it differs to that of the alleged victim described here.

[coin-investor]

I stupidly lost ~$3000 in a crypto currency scam.

I am an idiot.

I'm upset that I lost my money but I could have lost a lot more. I'm mostly just embarrassed. I'm a Software Developer at a large tech company and even used to work at Geek Squad so I am very familiar with these kind of scams. I never thought something like this would happen to me because I consider myself very tech savvy consumer.

We can briefly describe this case as an idiot move (which he himself admits), and to make the situation even worse he is "a Software Developer at a large tech company" who is "very familiar with these kind of scams". Really unbelievable, if this is true he didn't deserve to lose just $3000 but a lot more, and if I were his boss he would have gotten an immediate dismissal from the company. If he is able to make such a financial loss to himself, what damage can he do to the company?

Imagine a situation where someone who claims to be working for the company is contacted him ask for some code, he would probably pass it on because he's not aware of the fact that phishing/fake sites/e-mails/twitter are common things these days.

I read that he did not verify if the giveaway is legit, so he let his greed gets the best of him and you are right he should know better, imagine if these scammers can victimize, a developer like him expect greedy newbies to fall for this, the giveaway is a big news now, I have read so many similar threads like that, is he not updated on the trending scamming. 

[UserU]

Ouch, who's generous enough to actually double deposits? That's like one of the oldest crypto scams in the book.

[Balladtony77]

Few giveaways are real on twitter but they will never ask you for anything in return, any giveaway that ask for any penny, I repeat 'any penny' is scam, giveaways are meant to be free without requesting for anything

[gentlemand]

TBH, I don't!

Um, yeah.

Fuck 'em.

I struggle go think of anything more stupid and obvious. It's even gone beyond Nigerian princes by this point. At least you don't start off knowing who they are. I would've thought even someone nursing a catastrophic brain injury can figure out Elon Musk has slightly better things to do with his time, let alone his money. 

[aioc]

I'm surprised on the greediness, what was he thinking? Is he thinking that he must act right away because the giveaway will soon be gone in two minutes, is he that newbie to not use Google and his head, I feel sorry for him but he deserves it, and it's good that he is sharing this.

[hatshepsut93]

I struggle go think of anything more stupid and obvious. It's even gone beyond Nigerian princes by this point. At least you don't start off knowing who they are. I would've thought even someone nursing a catastrophic brain injury can figure out Elon Musk has slightly better things to do with his time, let alone his money. 

I have a theory for explaining why some people so easily fall for scams in crypto - it's because they subconsciously don't think about it as money, but more like some shiny Internet thing. There's still plenty of people who believe that they should be able to get crypto for free from faucets, airdrops, giveaways, promotions - crypto is like magic to them, a get rich quick magic. Maybe some of them got free money from it in the past, so they believe in miracles like Vitalik or Musk giving them free coins. So, maybe to them it actually makes more sense than the classic Nigerian prince scam.

[gentlemand]

You said it.

After all this time there is still some sort of disconnect in the way many people perceive it.

Even when people have paid large sums for it they are willing to risk it in ways they'd never dream of with conventional money.

And that's despite crypto having no protection and no comebacks.

I'll never understand that.

[Baofeng]

And another new 'fake Elon Musk" give away was born again;

Code:

 Phishing Site - https://muskaway.info/

Yeah, we felt sorry for them, but on the other-hand, you have to think what kind of judgement do those guys have? Do they really thought that Elon Musk will give them free money?

[ScamViruS]

When we post about such scams, many people say that no one gets into such traps. But I have seen many victims of such scams. Especially the newbies are victims of this scam. So we should be more careful about these scams so we can create a secure crypto world.

Thanks OP for pointing this out.

[secone]

https://muskfun.info/
1450+ claps the article seem very truested for people "who want to get freecoin"

anyway this model scam is very oldist in cryptoworld, someone create news about this in april 2019
https://hackernoon.com/beware-of-the-giveaway-scam-4d5905b6d422

i still can't understand why people who know and use bitcoin can fall to giveaway scam model.

[Mike Mayor]

I got this weird airdrop from a Chinese company called betbeb. I do not remember doing the airdrop and the number of coins they have given me is far too much. They seem to want me to connect my meta mask and use the airdrop coins to buy a fake miner. Of coarse no miner exists and most likely my funds will be taken off the connected wallet. How exactly would connecting my meta account to their site put me at risk? I know it is what they want me to do but I want to know if it will actually work. Here is the airdrop. http://betbeb.com/airdrop Please do not connect your wallet to or support this site anyway. I am leaving the link here so people can see for themselves if anyone is curious. I received this airdrop a few weeks ago so be careful about the tokens you received in your wallet. Make sure they do no attempt to bait you.

[conex]

Crazy. This isn't the first Elon like scam that's out there. Whoever follows Elon knows he wouldn't make a giveaway contest lol.