Cryptocurrency scams aren’t a new thing. Scheming bad actors have used the lure of offers that are too good to be true for years to sucker in marks, and in the process, steal their money, identity, or hack their systems. Now that one of the internet’s biggest schemers has been roped into a few scams, he’s calling them out.
Late last week, I noticed an account pretending to be John McAfee had tagged me in a post, promising to give free crypto if I simply followed a link. Several accounts celebrated receiving Ethereum in the replies, but it was obviously a scam, so I blocked and reported the account, as any good Twitter citizen should.
Now in response, John McAfee, noted dark coin advocate, has called out Twitter’s inability to police scams using him as a figurehead. He specifically points to an additional Medium post (which has since been taken down by the site for violating terms of use), likely made by the same scammer, promising SegWitCoin (BTC) and Ethereum if the user would verify a wallet.
Entire articles now being written by scammers claiming to be me, saying I'm giving away Bitcoin and Ethereum (Your choice apparenly). Are people really this stupid? If so, I'm resigning from the human race. No one gives anything for free, people, least of all – me! https://t.co/cBFhKybPMd
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) August 12, 2019
In a follow up interview with CCN, McAfee bemoaned his lack of success in appealing to Twitter’s moderators:
This happens three or four times a day where people pretending to be me on various platforms, attempt to scam people using a variety of scams.
On my Twitter account everyone of my tweets are peppered with comments from people pretending to be me and attempting to get people to send Bitcoin or Ethereum in exchange for a larger amount. I no longer bother to report them to Twitter because I never get a response.
While that’s certainly true in his comments, new Medium posts and accounts that hunt down people who follow McAfee is taking this a step further. For those already silly enough to follow McAfee, there’s good chance they’re just as likely to fall for a “free money” type of scam.
As sad as it is that Twitter won’t do more to protect their service against these predators, it’s not shocking at all to see McAfee swept up in it. He built his reputation on peddling dark coins that provided no utility, promises his followers BTC will reach $1 million by the end of 2020, and creates enough controversy to make anything believable.
It’s great to see McAfee taking a stance against the most obvious type of scam, but don’t expect any improvement on the other fronts.
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