For a brief moment on January 14th, the South African national cricket team was promoting a Bitcoin lottery scam on its Twitter account. The Tweet alleged that the national team had partnered with Luno wallet and was allowing people to enter into a draw to win 20 BTC ($73,000) – all you had to do was send 0.01 BTC to a certain address. However, five hours later the Tweet was removed and the team issued an apology statement claiming that it was the result of a hack. Whether it was actually a hack or a scrappy social media executive looking to impress is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure – it’s not the first time we have seen incidents like this happen.
Fake Elon Musk Scam
Fortunately, Cricket South Africa (CSA) isn’t the first high profile Twitter account to get hacked or spoofed, leading many in the crypto world to help point out that it was in fact a scam. In November 2018, scammers spoofed Elon Musk’s Twitter account and managed to scam Twitter users out of 26 BTC before Twitter removed the fake profile. The scammers were clever and used virtually the same Twitter handle, but with a tiny typo in it, leading many to believe the messages were in fact from Elon Musk himself.
Cricket’s Tangle with Crypto
Crypto is slowly making its way into the cricket world, but as Michael Clarke found out in August 2018, it’s a world that isn’t quite ready for crypto. The Aussie batting legend posted a Tweet promoting an ICO from Global Tech. However, it went down with his fans as well as a duck against England in the Ashes would have, leaving him to endure torrents of abuse and ridicule from his army of loyal fans.
Social Media is Packed Full of Scams
Unfortunately, social media makes it all too easy for scammers to spoof accounts and have people believe that the spoofed account is in fact genuine. During August, a scammer spoofed the Instagram account of the Maltese Prime Minister– Joseph Muscat. The spoof was so good, that a number of senior party officials believed the spoofed account and followed it. However, the spoofed account was easy to spot, as it asked followers to send BTC to an address in order to be rewarded with more – a clear sign to anyone with half a brain that it’s a fake account.
Fortunately, the South African cricket team pulled the offending Tweet as soon as it was alerted to the fact it was a scam and it issued a statement of apology. For the meantime, it looks like an innocent mistake or a hack. Social media is packed full of scams, so be careful out there and remember the golden rule – if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is a scam.
