Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary had his Twitter account compromised Thursday, with the hackers using it to promote a fraudulent crypto giveaway. The scammers claimed O’Leary was giving away 5,000 bitcoin and 15,000 ether.
Kevin O’Leary’s ‘Fake’ Bitcoin and Ethereum Giveaway
The official Twitter account of Shark Tank cast member Kevin O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, started pushing a bitcoin and ethereum giveaway Thursday morning. The post claimed that O’Leary had profited a great deal from cryptocurrencies in recent years and he was now giving away 5,000 BTC and 15,000 ETH. The tweet also included a link leading to a website that claimed to be the official O’Leary Giveaway, stating that everyone could take part, including those in the United States.
O’Leary’s Twitter account further stated that the hack was not true and the giveaway was not a scam. It was also falsely claimed that CNBC had interviewed O’Leary the night before to announce that he would be giving away some real cryptocurrencies.
The link in the tweet directed investors to a website that claimed to be the official O’Leary Giveaway of bitcoin and ether. It provided information about the giveaway, with two links to enter a BTC draw and ETH draw.
The giveaway posts were removed from O’Leary’s Twitter account within hours.
Crypto Giveaways Have Become Mainstream on Social Media
Cryptocurrency giveaway scams are common on social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. The scammers often gain access to the accounts of celebrities, politicians, companies and other prominent figures to promote fake giveaways.
The O’Leary Giveaway was no different, as the scammer reused the same website they had created for the fake Elon Musk and Tesla giveaways. In addition to thanking people for entering the giveaway and asking them to send some BTC, the website had the Tesla logo at the top and was hosted on a domain that included the Tesla URL.
In July 2020, a number of Twitter accounts were hacked to promote a bitcoin giveaway, including those of Apple, Google, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Floyd Mayweather, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, Mr. Beast, Uber and Warren Buffett. More recently, Pakistani politician Imran Khan’s Instagram account was used to promote a giveaway scam, while the British Army’s official YouTube and Twitter accounts were compromised in July to promote a bitcoin giveaway.
O’Leary recently defended former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was paid $15 million to be the exchange
