CHICAGO (News Nation/AP) — The Twitter accounts of several politicians, technology giants, and major companies appear to have been hacked Wednesday, in an alleged Bitcoin scam.
The bogus tweets came from accounts belonging to political figures including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Mike Bloomberg as well as a number of tech billionaires. Among them were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The fake tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a Bitcoin address. Bezos, Gates, and Musk are among the 10 richest people in the world, with tens of millions of followers on Twitter.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, but said it is investigating and promised an update. The FBI said it was aware of Twitter’s security breach, but declined further comment.
The apparently fake tweets were all quickly deleted.
The Bitcoin account mentioned in the fake tweets appears to have been created on Wednesday. By the end of the day, it had received almost 12.9 bitcoins, an amount currently valued at slightly more than $114,000. At some point during the day, roughly half that sum in bitcoin was withdrawn from the account.
