Benzinga - The official social media account of business intelligence company MicroStrategy Inc (NASDAQ:MSTR) was allegedly compromised on Sunday, with scammers promoting a fraudulent airdrop of an Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH)-based token named MSTR.
What Happened; Users who clicked on the provided links were taken to an imitation MicroStrategy website that asked them to connect their digital wallets to claim the non-existent MSTR token.
As reported by independent investigator ZachXBT and anti-fraud group Scam Sniffer, the scheme quickly led to substantial financial losses, with victims collectively losing at least $440,000.
0xe7645b8672b28a17dd0d650a5bf89539c9aa28da~$440K stolen from the compromise so far
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 26, 2024
Scam Sniffer disclosed that a single user suffered a loss of more than $420,000 to this scam, with the theft occurring soon after the fraudulent links went live on MicroStrategy’s account. The affected individual had a total of $424,786 siphoned from their altcoin holdings, including $134,000 in wBAI, $122,000 in CHEX, and $45,000 in wPOKT.
someone lost $424,786 worth of $wBAI, $wPOKT, and $CHEX to phishing scams about 5 minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/GEJvHEXuM7— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) February 26, 2024
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Why It Matters: The scammer appears to be exploiting MicroStrategy and its CEO, Michael Saylor’s, well-known positive outlook on Bitcoin. Last week, he described the spot Bitcoin ETFs as a “gateway” for institutional capital.
Saylor had previously told Benzinga in an exclusive interview that he is “married to Bitcoin.”
MicroStrategy did not respond to Benzinga’s request to comment at the time of publication.
Price Action: At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $51,523, down 0.08% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum gained 2.6% to $3,101.74 during the same period as reported by Benzinga Pro.
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