Twitter still flooded with crypto scammers buying ads with Elon Musk’s face

by Arthur · March 5, 2023

US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado (US Air Force photo by Trevor Cokley)

US Air Force Academy

Have you noticed a deluge of ads on Twitter lately touting scam cryptocurrencies using Elon Musk’s face? You are not alone. Last week I reported on the paid ads fraudulently using Musk and his companies to remove junk crypto. And it seems the problem is only getting worse.

“Neura Announces Their Blockchain Project,” reads an ad I saw on Sunday.

If you click on the ad, it will take you to a page that promises, “Breaking news for all crypto investors around the world!”

The site insists that a “pre-sale” is underway for a Neuralink-branded cryptocurrency, which is simply not true. Well, the token sale is real – in the sense that scammers are trying to get your money.

“The visionary CEO of Tesla and Neuralink, Elon Musk, has just announced the launch of the official Neuralink token, and the pre-sale is now open for a limited time only,” the scam site says.

In reality, Elon Musk has never launched his own cryptocurrency. And he has never endorsed a coin associated with Tesla, Neuralink or SpaceX, or any of his other companies. If you buy the coins, which are billed at $2.50 each, you’re just giving your money to scammers.

token with a non-existent connection to Elon Musk.

Twitter

Twitter, which used to respond quickly to inquiries from reporters before Musk took over, still hasn’t responded to my questions. And it remains unclear whether Twitter is fully aware that fraudsters are using the platform to sell fraudulent crypto. But whether they realize it or not, the company is clearly making money by taking advertising money from scammers.

By clicking through the ad I saw on Sunday, users eventually arrive at a site made to look like an official Neuralink site. And it is this shell game that probably allows the scammers to get their ads approved. Presumably, the content linked to looks harmless enough when reviewed by Twitter’s processes—assuming they still have some sort of ad review process—and then the content of those links is replaced once the ad is published.

made to look like Neuralink’s website.

Twitter

The ad I saw on Sunday wasn’t the only crypto scam in recent days. I also saw a SpaceX coin advertised on Twitter and sold using the same techniques. The ad used a photo of Musk with a SpaceX logo behind his head, and was made to look like it came from CoinTelegraph, an actual news outlet that covers crypto.

And just like the scams I reported on last week, the scammers promise that people who buy enough can win free investment advice from Musk via WhatsApp, a trip to Mars, or a free brain chip implant from Neuralink. The only real difference between the site now and what I saw a week ago is that the deeply fake video of Musk appears to be gone.

Given recent news that the FDA has rejected Neuralink’s application for human trials, you’d think the scammers would want to update that promise. However, scammers may wonder about the fact that the person who falls for this type of scam does not keep the best track of the news. After all, they are promising a new cryptocurrency that Musk has never promoted on his official Twitter account.

I contacted Twitter again on Sunday and will update this post if I hear back. But I won’t hold my breath.

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I’m a technology reporter and the founder of Paleofuture.com, a website I started in 2007 that looks at past visions of the future, from flying cars and jetpacks to utopias and dystopias. Paleofuture was previously hosted on Smithsonian magazine (2011-2013) and Gizmodo (2013-2020).

My work has appeared on BBC Future, Slate, The Verge, GOOD, Pacific Standard, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and Buzzfeed. Most recently, I was a senior writer at Gizmodo for ten years. I have also given talks at South by Southwest, dConstruct in Brighton, The Conference in Malmo, UCLA’s Digital Cash conference in Los Angeles and the University of Virginia’s edUi conference. In 2012 I partnered with the BBC to exhibit an exhibition of retro-futuristic objects from my personal collection in Hollywood, California.