June 24, 2021 By Tara Seals
Beware: The swindle uses legitimately purchased YouTube ads, real liquidity, legitimate DEX Uniswap, and the real wallet extension MetaMask to create an entirely convincing fake coin gambit.
YouTube fans have been swindled out of almost $1 million (and counting) thanks to an extremely convincing fake SpaceX crypto-coin campaign that uses a popular decentralized finance protocol called Uniswap.
The scam is rearing its Elon-Musk-themed head in ads on YouTube that show up before and after videos about cryptocurrency, according to research from Tenable. So far, the scammers have earned more than $430,000 so far across two completed campaigns, with a third still running that is on pace to bring the total “earnings” up to $1 million, the firm said.
