‘Please help’, appeal those who lost $2 million to fake Elon Musks

Since October 2020, consumers have reported losing more than $80 million to crypto-investment scams, according to the federal agency. Many of the schemes promised that a celebrity associated with cryptocurrency would multiply and return any coins the consumer sent to their digital wallet.

Washington Dozens of consumers who were scammed by Elon Musk impersonators taking advantage of the recent cryptocurrency mania are begging the Federal Trade Commission for help getting their money back.

Musk has become a big player in the crypto world, roiling markets with a variety of tweets. (Reuters file photo)

Since October 2020, consumers have reported losing more than $80 million to crypto-investment scams, according to the federal agency. Many of the schemes promised that a celebrity associated with cryptocurrency would multiply and return any coins the consumer sent to their digital wallet. The losses to Elon Musk impersonators alone have exceeded $2 million.

Such ruses had already been going on for years when Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, hosted NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” earlier this month -- raising interest in crypto and making it even easier for crooks to find people to dupe.

Public records obtained from the FTC illustrate the litany of complaints, with names and addresses removed to protect consumer privacy. “I was sucked into a fake Elon Musk Bitcoin scam,” says one complaint. “I got scammed by these guys,” reads another.

“There’s so much hype about the increase in value,” Emma Fletcher, a programme analyst at the FTC, said in an interview. “People don’t want to miss out, and scammers want to take advantage of the information gap between their knowledge and the enthusiasm about cryptocurrency.”