Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary’s Twitter account was hacked on Thursday and started promoting a crypto giveaway scam.
The famed investor’s Twitter account, which is followed by more than 982,000 users, sent out multiple tweets about a giveaway of 5,000 BTC and 15,000 ETH, with an accompanying image featuring O’Leary himself.
“Everyone who wants to get free crypto now has a chance here!” the now-deleted tweet said. The O’Leary Twitter account further claimed that it is not hacked and the giveaways are not a scam. It also falsely claimed that Mr. Wonderful had said on CNBC that he planned to give away some cryptocurrencies.
The tweet provided a link that instructed respondents to first send their own digital assets to verify their wallet addresses, to receive the giveaway prizes. Once this is done, however, no funds are sent to the participants and the scammers make away with the funds sent.
Notably, crypto giveaway scams are one of the most prevalent forms of scams in the industry. These often involve hacked accounts of famous people, politicians, celebrities, and companies that are used to promote fake giveaways.
Scammers often impersonate well-known figures like Elon Musk, Michael Saylor, and CZ in order to promote their fraudulent schemes using fake accounts. These individuals, who are leaders in companies such as Tesla, MicroStrategy, and Binance, are commonly targeted.
Notably, the latest scam reportedly used the same website from a previous Tesla scam giveaway that contained the Tesla logo. The website also contained numerous grammatical errors.
O’Leary, who has become a vocal proponent of Web3 technology, has revealed recently that he has lost almost all of the $15 million the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX paid him to be its official spokesperson. He said at the time:
“Total deal was just under $15 million, all in. I put about $9.7 million into crypto. I think that’s what I lost. I don’t know. It’s all at zero. I don’t know cos my account got scraped a couple of weeks ago. All the data, all the coins, everything.”
“It was not a good investment […] I don’t make good investments all the time, luckily, I make more good ones than bad ones, but that was a bad one,” he added.
O’Leary was among a large list of celebrities who promoted FTX aggressively online. When O’Leary first began to promote FTX, he said it was FTX’s compliance systems that drew him to invest in the crypto exchange.
As reported, FTX investors have filed a class action lawsuit against several celebrities who promoted the platform, including Kevin O’Leary, Golden State Warriors, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, Naomi Osaka, and more.
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