We’re Not Running Any Crypto Scams, Regardless of What Twitter Says

If you wanted proof that crypto scams have gone mainstream, look no further than our Twitter accounts, @LilyKatz and @olgakharif. During the first three weeks of May, fraudsters copied our pages, including profile photos, to push Ether swindles onto our 17,000 collective followers. And in spite of multiple requests to Twitter Inc. to have them removed, at least one of our doppelgängers—and a host of other bot-driven fakes targeting individuals and companies—are still out there offering unbelievable deals. “Setting up a bot is easy-peasy,” says Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. “The sign-up probably takes longer than the programming.”

Twitter is a hotbed of crypto gossip and one of the preferred places for promoters to hawk their products, so it makes sense that scammers are crowding onto the platform. We discovered @LilyKatz5 first, after the impostor tweeted at the real account’s followers with a promise of up to 100 Ether to anyone who sent in a small quantity of cryptocurrency. Twitter shut down the copycat once Lily uploaded a photo of her passport as proof of her identity, but that’s a step many privacy-minded users don’t feel comfortable taking.