On Thursday, crypto scammers released and promoted the token “$MBAPPE” after hacking the Twitter account of French soccer star Kylian Mbappe. The tweets promoting $MBAPPE have now been deleted. After the hack, the market value of the $MBAPPE token skyrocketed to tens of millions within minutes, but quickly plummeted to zero.
Journalist Collin Wu reported that one user invested 2 SOL (roughly $286) in the token and sold it at its peak, securing a profit of roughly 1,398 SOL, or the equivalent of $200,000.
One cryptocurrency investor fell prey to a scam and lost more than $1 million just an hour after purchasing the tokens on Thursday.
Someone created a new wallet and spent 7,156 $sol($1.03 million) #MEMECoin name $MBAPPE In one transaction, it was worth just $9,200.
This guy lost over $1 million in just one hour! 😱https://t.co/IKsUN14km1 pic.twitter.com/kTF6SQCKT4
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 29, 2024
Using Mbappe’s Twitter account, the hacker posted multiple promotions for the token “$MBAPPE,” which was created using Solana-based memecoin deployer Pump.fun, a platform for easily and quickly creating and launching memecoins.
A few minutes after the promotional tweet, crypto Twitter noticed that the “MBAPPE” token spiked and then quickly dropped to zero. This suspicious behavior led people to recognize the hack and raise the alarm on the matter. The post was then deleted.
Twitter users claimed that, according to the graph, the person who hacked Mbappe’s account made around $100,000 in an hour from the crypto scam.
MBAPPE Token Graph via Twitter account: @StokeyyG2
Aside from carrying out the massive crypto heist, the hackers also had a great time posting nasty tweets and causing mayhem on Twitter.
Thread: Kylian Mbappe hacked X account in the early hours of August 29, 2024 and tweeted: pic.twitter.com/uoC7ohTtR5
— Kurdy AFC (@AfcKurdy) August 29, 2024
Hackers take over Mbappe’s account and tweet.
This is not the first time that Mbappé’s account has been compromised and used for alleged fraudulent activities. In 2019 and 2020, hackers promoted Bitcoin and used the footballer’s Twitter account to blackmail investors with false promises of instant profits. Cryptocurrency hacks are on the rise, there’s no doubt about it. In fact, in July alone, 16 cryptocurrency hacks caused a massive loss of $266 million.
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