Vertcoin joins growing list of hijacked Twitter crypto accounts

It appears that the cryptocurrency market continues to be compromised by scammers and fraudsters at every turn with the latest victim being Vertcoin.

At around 20:00 UTC on Tuesday, the @Vertcoin account tweeted that its developers were “doing a 10 BTC giveaway” to its followers. The now deleted tweet asked users to send 0.005 BTC to a specific address to enter what was clearly a scam contest.

Hey, everyone! Vertcoin and staff are pleased to announce that we’re doing a 10 BTC giveaway to our followers to celebrate Vertcoin’s success. Send 0.005 to 3HU5sj7kB6wT9zRwpbhCRrR28vKWjfkMKf enter! Winner will be announced 5/3/18 at 8pm EST. — Vertcoin (@Vertcoin) May 1, 2018

The tweet immediately caused considerable consternation amongst community members who are known to be very loyal and were instantly suspicious. The tweet was very similar to several scams involving cryptocurrency giveaways that have invaded the Twitter space for the past several months. These are giving an extremely bad name to the cryptocurrency world, which is still seen as an unsafe haven for prospective investors who are looking to bite the bullet.

The tweet was confirmed as a scam when Vertcoin’s lead developer James Lovejoy tweeted from his personal account confirming the hack and that the company’s Twitter account had been compromised. Lovejoy called on all users not to accept any giveaways confirming that they were all fake.

The @Vertcoin twitter account has been compromised. We have contacted @TwitterSupport. DO NOT accept any giveaways, they are all fake.

— James Lovejoy (@jamesl22) May 1, 2018

The scammer’s operation was not much of a success, however. At the time of writing, the BTC address had received less than 0.007 BTC, which translates into a pathetically low $61. Only one transaction of 0.005 BTC went through with just one user falling victim to the scam. The tweet still remained online as at 21:54UTC however there were no more posts from the scammer. It is unknown whether any private messages were sent from the compromised account.

Unfortunately for Twitter and the cryptocurrency world in general, scams have run riot on the platform in recent months. This despite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s pledges that the company is working assiduously to get them removed. It actually contributed to the problem some weeks back when it verified a scam Verge account which caused havoc on the platform. The scammers typically use false accounts to imitate well known industry figures and companies formulating replies to official account tweets, which, in turn, attempts to trick gullible users to send cryptocurrency.