Legendary actor William Shatner who is beloved around the world for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series has been righting some wrongs of his own in the crypto universe as he called out a ‘pump and dump scheme’ using his name on a fake twitter account.
BTW another fake me pushing a pump and dump crypto Ponzi scheme: @wiliiamshatners
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 2, 2018
Shatners Not Giving Away Ether
Shatner called out the fake tweet, which used his profile photo and name with just an S added to the end, that was hyping an Ethereum giveaway scam. The fake tweet promoted a website called etherpromotion.org which promised visitors who sent them between 0.5 and 20 Ether in order to confirm their addresses would receive ten times the amount back.
The scammer had been tweeting on the fake Shatner account since late June but had only managed to gain six followers. At the time of writing both the twitter account and website have been suspended.
Though Shatner’s description of the scam may have been a bit off, his followers responded with the kind of devotion that hardcore Trekkies are known for. This isn’t Shatner’s first brush with the crypto world as the 87-year-old actor recently become the spokesman for a Canadian alternative energy company called Solar Alliance which is building what they describe as the first solar-powered cryptocurrency mining facility.
When speaking of the project Shatner described his understanding (or lack of) blockchain technology and Bitcoin in a very Kirkian way saying:
“You have to blank your mind and say ‘What is blockchain, again? How does mining operate, again?’ The concepts are really strange, and yet when you begin to grasp it, it makes sense.”
Crypto Scammers May Take $3 Billion in 2018
Scammers using fake celebrity twitter accounts to promote crypto schemes is a widespread problem as the imposters specifically chose names with known links to the crypto market. Big names that have been used for similar schemes in the past include Bitcoin evangelist John Macfee, entrepreneur Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson and even Vitilak Buterin one of the founders of Ethereum.
2018 has proven so far to be a boom year for crypto-related fraud. The US Federal Trade Commision held a workshop titled ‘Decrypting Cryptocurrency Scams’ where they estimated that scams involving cryptocurrency in some way had netted approximately $542 million in the first two months of this year. Projecting that figure through to the close of the year the FTC predicts fraud in the space to possibly hit the $ 3 billion mark.
