Fraudsters hacked the social media account of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, by promoting a fake coin. The resulting BRAZIL token rose by more than 10,000% in just a few minutes, earning the fraudsters more than $1.3 million.
During his time in office, Bolsonaro did little to promote the crypto industry or partner with the community.
Crypto Scams on Social Media to have rose to prominence this week, and one amusing example targeted Jair Bolsonaro. A local influencer reported that Bolsonaro’s social media account was hacked and used to promote BRAZIL, a sketchy meme.
The position was soon taken down, but the scammers still accumulated more than $1.3 million. This follows a dark trend for political coins that emerged throughout the week.
“Bolsonaro’s official account on Be careful, don’t buy it. It’s a scam and Bolsonaro’s sons have already warned about it on their official profiles,” Berman said.
During his tenure as Brazilian President Bolsonaro was not a particularly pro-crypto figure. He signed a friendly settlement in lame duck session after his 2022 election defeat but didn’t do much else for the space.
However, under the mandate of his successor, financial regulators approved a Solana ETF and the Central Bank of Brazil partnered with Chainlink to create a CBDC.
All of this is to say that targeting Bolsonaro for the meme coin scam seems at first to be an odd choice. However, as Vitalik Buterin pointed out yesterday, political coins increase considerably in space.
Since the American president launched his own TRUMP coinscammers have identified a potentially lucrative trend. Recent polls have claimed that more than 40% of TRUMP buyers were complete beginners in the crypto industry, and scammers won $857 million by exploiting them.
Additionally, a Filipino group created a fake XRP wallet which they claimed was linked to the US Treasury. The President Trump meme coin has created the expectation that more celebrities or political figures will do the same.
This is why investors seek to take advantage of every new coin that emerges, but most end up losing money.
“The risk of political coins is that they are an ideal vehicle for corruption. If a politician issues a coin, you don’t even need to send *him* coins to give him money. Instead, you simply buy and hold the coin, which passively increases the value of their holdings,” Vitalik Buterin said recently. wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Political coins were already creating unease in the crypto space, even when they were legitimate. If hackers continue to use them for blatant theft attempts, they could seriously damage the community’s reputation.
Scammers managed to snatch BRAZIL by hacking Bolsonaro, even though he has no real crypto affiliation. This is a particularly worrying sign.
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