If you went anywhere near Twitter last night, chances are you saw the chaotic aftermath of a massive security breach in which several celebrity accounts and cryptocurrency companies were hacked to tweet a bitcoin scam. Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Kanye West were among the compromised accounts, all of them tweeting a very similar message. “I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19,” the compromised Elon Musk account tweeted. “I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour.”
Shockingly, it seems at least a few people fell for the scam – and according to public blockchain records, the link received contributions totalling over $100k (£80k) within hours of it being posted online (via BBC). And while it should be obvious that sending cryptocurrency to an unknown wallet is a bad idea, for many RuneScape players, they knew from personal experience. So many people noticed the similarities to an old RuneScape coin scam, in fact, that RuneScape started trending.
I can’t believe a hacker got access to every blue check account on all of Twitter and instead of derailing the global economy or sparking geopolitical conflict or some other wild apocalypse shit they just did a fucking runescape doubling money scam
— Eryk (@Ambisinister_) July 16, 2020
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In RuneScape, this particular money doubling scam falls under the umbrella of “trust scams”, which mainly take place on trade associated worlds and the Grand Exchange (the main trade hub for each world). As with the bitcoin scam, the scammer offers to double the victim’s money… but only if the victim sends some over first. The doubling is supposed to then occur in a separate trade (making it a trust trade), but at this point the scammer can simply take the money and run, world hopping and blocking the victim in order to escape.
According to RuneScape veteran and Eurogamer guides writer Lottie Lynn, some scammers first start by actually doubling small amounts, such as 10k or 20k coins, before earning the player’s trust and making off with 100k. “The scammer might also try to trick the other player into simply dropping the money, wait for one minute until it appears to the whole world, and then do a runner,” she added.