A prominent bitcoin (BTC) enthusiast said he outmaneuvered a Twitter scammer – and although he spent USD 100 in the process, he said he has unveiled some key scamming tactics common on the social media platform. Meanwhile, another crypto community member said he has managed to stave off the worst of a suspected SIM swap attack.
Per a series of tweets from crypto podcaster Brad Mills, a scammer approached him offering to sell the Twitter handle (@BradMills) of another Brad Mills – an evangelical Christian pastor and podcaster.
The crypto Brad Mills stated that he decided to engage with the scammer and offered to send money to complete the deal. However, it appears the scammer was something of a crypto-skeptic.
Mills wrote,
“[The] strange thing is that I offered [the scammer] BTC 0.1 at first and he talked me down to USD 200, but I insisted [on paying] at least USD 300.”
BTC 0.1 is worth around USD 950 at the time of writing.
The scammer eventually agreed on a fee of USD 300, although Mills ended up sending just USD 100.
The crypto podcaster was then told to follow a series of steps in order to claim the @BradMills Twitter handle – the account belonging to the Christian podcaster.
Mills wrote that the scammer was “adamant that I need to copy and paste “bradmiIIs” to my settings to change my handle.”
Mills checked this using a Unicode checker and found that the “actual characters” involved spelling the surname using two capital Is – instead of two lower-case Ls.
The crypto podcaster claimed that the scammer was likely attempting to dupe him into surrendering control over his own @bradmillscan handle. The crypto Mills has 17.5K Twitter followers.
4/ After I caught the scam I told him I wasn’t sending the rest of the money and told him it was worth the $100 to… https://t.co/YwwJINAUJR
Meanwhile, SIM swap scams are becoming increasingly popular among would-be hackers. And the former MEW/MyCrypto Chief Technology Officer Daniel Ternyak, who is now working with Grant.io, a decentralized funding solution, also took to Twitter to state that he narrowly avoided major damage after a suspected SIM swap.
Ternyak stated that he had “already taken steps to lock down major accounts like Gmail” by “removing two-factor authentication as a recovery mechanism, and sticking with Google Authenticator.”
The preventative steps appear to have proven success, he stated.
Ternyak tweeted,
“It doesn’t appear any accounts were accessed, and my phone number has been restored, I’m tentatively hoping that the attack is over, and unsuccessful.”
…many web applications, and especially banks, refuse to support Google Authenticator (don’t even mention yubikey)… https://t.co/wbs1ymtvT4
Last year, another crypto community member managed to out-scam a hapless would-be villain – and later donated his earnings to charity.
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Learn more:
How Cryptocurrency Scams Work
5 Crypto Scams To Be Aware Of
