It should be noted that the scammers used a fairly simple and popular scheme, which we have seen many times before. In particular, the criminals voiced a fictitious excuse for giving away coins and promised everyone to double the amount of cryptocurrency sent to a certain address. We already saw something similar on a global scale in July 2020, when a hacker hacked Twitter and published similar statements from the accounts of world-famous politicians, artists and companies.

At the time, the fake messages looked like this.

The main victims of Twitter hacking

Note that a similar hoax scheme is still popular today. We regularly check live YouTube broadcasts, in which scammers on behalf of stars also promise to double the amount sent. A particularly popular recent image is that of Michael Saylor, the head of MicroStrategy, which has invested billions of dollars in Bitcoin. With that in mind, it’s easier for newcomers to believe in the prospect of a coin giveaway from someone so famous and rich.

Broadcasts mentioning fake cryptocurrency giveaways

Although the principle of this scam has been around for years, aspiring cryptocurrency owners still fall victim to it. This can be attributed to the influx of newcomers to the digital asset industry, which remains extremely popular even despite the current market downturn. Hackers are therefore keen to take advantage of this.

What cryptocurrency fraud schemes are

The irony is that as recently as last week, Modi praised technologies like cryptocurrencies for the possibility of enhancing democracy. This was part of his speech at a virtual summit with US President Joe Biden. Here is the quote in which the Indian representative brought up the topic.

Working together, democrats can meet the aspirations of our citizens and celebrate the democratic spirit of humanity.

Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi

According to Cointelegraph sources, the status of cryptocurrencies in India is still uncertain, so a fake message from a hacker from Modi’s account made a lot of noise. In general, the message sounded like this.

India has officially recognised Bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially purchased 500 BTC and is distributing the coins to all citizens of the country.

Screenshot of the hackers’ message

By the way, the fact that a large company or even the government bought bitcoins today hardly surprises anyone. For example, MicroStrategy has accumulated over 121 thousand bitcoins, which is equivalent to $5.7 billion at today's exchange rate. At the same time, the government of El Salvador, where the cryptocurrency has been full-fledged legal tender since September 7, 2021, is making official BTC purchases.

Naturally, India’s parliament did not recognize the crypto as legal, and the hackers published a message just to attract more users to the fake coin giveaway link posted nearby. It is likely to have been used by thousands of people: the number of subscribers to Modi’s hacked account exceeds the 73.4 million mark.

Note that this is not the first time the Prime Minister’s account has been hacked. The previous hacker attack took place in September 2020. The attackers then used Modi’s subscriber base to spread information about a fake donation fund to fight COVID-19.

In general, the problem of hacking attacks on Twitter to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes has been discussed in the community for a very long time. Unfortunately, so far this phenomenon remains widespread, and Twitter management has no effective methods to combat it.


We believe that this situation clearly demonstrates how young the cryptocurrency industry is. Although the scheme has been around for several years, it continues to work because of the influx of newcomers. Hopefully, as the digital asset industry becomes more popular, more and more people will become aware of it - even outside of the coin niche.


Look for even more interesting things in our millionaires’ crypto-chat. There, we’ll talk about other topics that affect the world of blockchain and decentralisation in one way or another.