What is Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam?

It is a 2018 fraud campaign that hijacked verified Twitter accounts, renamed them to Elon Musk, and posted promoted tweets offering fake Bitcoin giveaways in exchange for a small deposit.

Where did Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam come from?

The scam was first widely reported on November 5, 2018 by Bleeping Computer, which documented the takeovers and giveaway ads appearing across Twitter.

What does Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam mean?

The name refers to the specific trick of impersonating Elon Musk on hijacked blue-check Twitter accounts to run fake Bitcoin giveaways, exploiting the trust signal of Twitter's verification badge.

How do you use Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam?

It is not a meme format to remix but a scam pattern later copied by other crypto fraudsters, who reused the hijacked-verified-account plus fake-giveaway structure with different celebrity names.

Is Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam still popular?

The specific 2018 wave was shut down after Twitter recovered the affected accounts, but the format kept resurfacing in copycat campaigns targeting other verified accounts in the years that followed.

Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam

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Published August 20, 2026

The Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam is a November 2018 wave of hijacked verified Twitter accounts rebranded as Elon Musk to push fake Bitcoin giveaway ads. The scheme pulled roughly $180,000 from victims in a single day and became a template for later celebrity crypto scams.

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Overview

The Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam refers to a wave of fraudulent giveaway tweets pushed from hijacked verified Twitter accounts in late 2018, each rebranded with Elon Musk's name and profile picture1. Scammers took over blue-check accounts belonging to companies like British fashion retailer Matalan, film distributor Pathe UK, and US publisher Pantheon Books, then swapped the display name and avatar to impersonate the Tesla and SpaceX founder while keeping the original @handle intact1.

The scheme relied on Twitter's paid promoted tweets feature, which pushed the fake giveaway posts into wider feeds and made them look like sponsored content from a real Musk campaign1. Users who clicked through were told to send between 0.1 and 3 BTC to a wallet address to "verify" themselves, with the fake promise of receiving one to ten Bitcoin back2. Many posts had obvious tells like misspellings such as "Bitcoic" and "suppoot," but the blue verification checkmark lent the tweets enough legitimacy to fool a lot of people1.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter (promoted tweets)

Date

2018

On November 5, 2018, security site Bleeping Computer flagged a coordinated string of Twitter takeovers pushing fake Elon Musk Bitcoin giveaway ads across the platform2. Because the scammers only changed the display name and avatar of already-verified accounts, tweets appeared with handles like @patheuk sitting next to Musk's photo and the blue tick, which was the core trick that made the Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam credible enough to work at scale1.

How It Spread

By the end of that first day, the wallet tied to the scam had received 392 transactions totaling roughly 28 Bitcoin, worth about $180,000 at the time2. To reinforce the illusion, the operators used other hijacked verified accounts to reply under the giveaway posts, pretending to be regular users who had already sent Bitcoin and received a payout back1.

Complaints piled up quickly. Twitter user @JoshMLabelle publicly called out CEO Jack Dorsey after three separate fake Musk giveaways were promoted into his feed in a short span3. User @TweetieMcTweets wrote a 16-part thread walking through how he personally fell for the scam and lost money, tagging Twitter Support along with BBC News and The Guardian4.

BBC News covered the story on November 8, 2018, noting that promoted tweets bearing Musk's likeness were reaching wide audiences and that Twitter declined to comment on individual accounts1. The Daily Dot and Business Insider also ran the story, and the incident became a reference point for the broader problem of verified account takeovers on the platform5.

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How to Use This Meme

The Fake Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam is a fraud pattern, not a joke format, but its structure became a template for later celebrity crypto scams. Copycats typically hijack or spoof a verified account, swap in a well-known name like Musk, Vitalik Buterin, or Michael Saylor, and post a "send X BTC, get 10X back" giveaway using the same fake-testimonials-in-replies trick documented in 20182.