Scammers are targeting the popularity of Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot with the distribution of counterfeit Grok tokens. A wallet linked to Changpeng Zhao received 90 million such tokens, which are believed to be scams. The rise in Elon Musk-related scams highlights ongoing threats in the crypto industry, with phishing scams resulting in substantial financial losses.
Scammers are exploiting the popularity of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, creating counterfeit tokens for potential phishing schemes. A wallet associated with Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, received 90 million fake Grok (GROK) tokens on April 21. The blockchain security firm PeckShield identified these tokens as likely part of fraudulent activities, since they were distributed across multiple addresses simultaneously.
The Grok AI chatbot on X platform does not possess an official cryptocurrency and has no future intentions of launching one. The first appearance of fake Grok tokens occurred in 2023, where an ERC-20 version was deployed on Ethereum, leading to a significant decline in value after a portion of the supply was sold by the scammer.
Scammers often leverage the reputability of social media platforms and well-known figures like Elon Musk to instil trust in their victims. Reports from the email security provider Mailsuite indicate that Meta was the most impersonated brand in phishing incidents throughout 2024, significantly overshadowing Coinbase, which ranks second in the crypto sector.
The trend of scams tied to Elon Musk is intensifying, with recent incidents including a bogus announcement promoting a fake “AI Elon Musk stream” claiming to distribute $20,000 in cryptocurrency. Additionally, various Elon Musk-themed memecoins have surfaced on the BNB Smart Chain, according to the scam detector Coinspeedrun. Furthermore, phishing attacks are a growing concern, having cost the crypto industry over $1 billion in 2024 alone, underscoring the urgent need for vigilance.
