Not long before, we busted a cryptocurrency scam run by scammers impersonating Elon Musk on Facebook. In a similar incidence, another Facebook verified Facebook Page by the name of Musk has popped up.
Ehraz Ahmed, a 25-year-old security researcher, who had earlier reported the scam has once again come across a Facebook page that is running a similar scam.
The shocking fact is that Ahmed suspects the verified page which has a following of 69K and follows 57 accounts is being run by the same scammers who were behind the previous two incidences.
Here is the URL of the page: https://www.facebook.com/ellonnmusk
“Since Bitcoin scams are becoming frequent and common, I was once again busy researching about them. To my surprise, I came across another verified page of Elon Musk. By visiting the Page Transparency section, I noticed that this page, unlike the previous ones, was created back in May 2015. The location of the admins is, once again, Germany and Spain, which may mean that these scammers are the same people who were behind the previous similar scams,” says Ahmed.
However, this time the scammers got the Page verified under the name of Musk himself. “It looks like this page hasn’t undergone any name changes. It was created by the name of Elon Musk and must have been verified with his name only. However, a point of concern is the fact that the scammers might have used the fake documents of Musk to get this page verified,” adds Ahmed.
The post which was made about a day ago says that if people want to participate in Musk’s upcoming coin, they can message him. The post at 4:05 PM IST has 799 likes, 350 comments, and 39 shares.
“The impersonators didn’t scam people of a crypto giveaway this time. Instead, they came up with another way of scamming people. They made a post announcing that Musk is all set to come up with a new digital currency named Musk Coin. And those who are willing to know more about it can message him on Facebook. While it is still unclear as to what the scammers have in mind this time, the one thing that is obvious is that it is yet another Cryptocurrency scam,” explains Ahmed.
It seems the page was only made active after the previous one was made unavailable as the page activity shows it came in use on November 26, 2021, the same day when the previous verified page was made unavailable. It has 17 posts, all of which are, more or less, similar to the ones made by Musk on Twitter. The first post which was a shared video was, however, made in January 2018. Prior to that, the Page was not active. The profile picture, too, resembles the one that Musk currently has on his Twitter handle.
However, this time it seems that people are more alert towards such scams. In the Review section, some people have pointed out that this is not Musk and that people shouldn’t fall for the blue tick.
“This is true that people are becoming aware of such scams, however, there’s still a long way to go. While many are smart enough to give a fraud alert in the page recommendation section, there are still a lot of people who are all excited to know more about this so-called new coin that will be launched by Musk’s impersonators,” concludes Ahmed.
Also, the back-to-back verified fake pages may mean that Facebook has to rethink its verification process or maybe come up with even more stringent rules for verifying people.