Scammer posing as Elon Musk awards one lucky Facebook user $3.7M: “I can finally retire now!”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and US president Donald Trump are supposedly giving lucky users 50 Bitcoin ($3.7 million). Instead, they're not and scammers are impersonating them to defraud victims.
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In celebration of the DOGECoin drop, Elon Musk, in partnership with Donald Trump, is giving lucky users 50 Bitcoin ($3.7 million). Well, this isn’t true, as it’s simply a scam to defraud unlucky victims.
“Oh man, I’m so happy that Elon contacted me directly with such an awesome offer! I can finally retire now!!!” said one Facebook user after being contacted by someone posing as Elon Musk.
Roberto Bertini Renzetti received a text message at 11:43 a.m. claiming that he had been randomly selected to receive 50 BTC, which translates to approximately US$3.7 million – a life-changing amount of money for some.
The message said that Renzetti had been awarded these funds “in celebration of the launch of DOGECoin,” a meme coin supposedly linked to the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk leads.
The sender claims that this DOGECoin is “supported in partnership with President [Donald Trump] and Elon Musk’s SpaceX team.”
Renezetti just needs to contact Elon Musk directly via an email that misspells the name of Musk’s company (Tesa instead of Tesla).
The message signs off: “Best regards and Good luck. Elon Musk and Team.”
It is incredibly far-fetched to think that Musk directly contacted Renzetti and awarded millions of dollars, and users spot the red flags immediately.
First of all, commenters noticed the misspelling of Tesla in the email address, which is usually a sign that the address is illegitimate.
This message is clearly a “smishing” (SMS phishing) scam, a type of fraud where scammers impersonate an organization or known individual (like Elon Musk) to extract sensitive information from the victim.
If Renezetti had been unwise to this scheme and had clicked the link to the fake Tesla email address, the scammer would likely have asked the victim for their crypto wallet address or wallet keys to “complete” the transaction.
The scammers would then likely use this information to drain the person's crypto wallets.
As one Facebook user mentioned: “Seems legit. No reason not to give them your wallet keys,” they said sarcastically.
Alternatively, upon clicking the link, the victim is transferred to a malicious website where their personal information is stolen, as is common with smishing scams.