Multiple fake Charlie Lee accounts on Twitter promise free Litecoin to people that send them Litecoin.
Twitter has seen an influx of “Charlie Lee” this week, with not just one, but multiple imposters posing as the Litecoin (LTC) creator and promoting a fake LTC giveaway.
I am donating 180 Litecoin to the LTC community. First 60 transactions with 0.3 LTC sent to the address below will each receive 3 LTC to the address the 0.3 LTC came from
LKGMCZZxp4hSCkwDQCuefBiwh93diTKt2z
Don’t miss out. Claim your LTC now!
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLitez) January 29, 2018
Most of the imposters are using Twitter accounts with names very similar to the real Charlie Lee, @SatoshiLite, such as @SatoshiLitez and @SatoshiLitee_, whose Twitter profiles exactly match those on the real Charlie Lee’s page.
The only thing that differs between these scammers is the amount of LTC being given away, ranging from 50 to 500 LTC.
There are also the more lazy scammers with similar fake giveaway posts, like @LiteSatoshi, whose relatively blank Twitter page says he is Roger Ver, or @kevinco68774468, whose page matches Lee’s in part but whose name appears as “your mom.”
Cointelegraph’s coverage of the Blockchain Connect conference, which took place in San Francisco on Jan. 26, was subject to one of “your mom”’s scam attempts:
I am donating 264 Litecoin to the LTC community. First 60 transactions with 0.4 LTC sent to the address below will each receive 4 LTC to the address the 0.4 LTC came from
Don’t miss out. Claim your LTC now!
LTC:
LZa5YSVadWWQAGvBmmspdNXr1sq2qgNnGd— your mom (@kevinco68774468) January 29, 2018
The real Lee tweeted a warning about the scammers, who he also said were blocking him so that he couldn’t see any new scam posts:
PSA: Please be wary of this Twitter scam going on right now. After every of my post, there will an immediate reply by a scammer promising to give away coins if you send him some. The post looks like it’s from me. Blocking them doesn’t help, b/c they just create another account. pic.twitter.com/qPHxKntPHD
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) January 30, 2018
The scammers may be taking advantage of Lee’s December 2017 announcement that he had sold and donated all of his LTC, perhaps hoping that Lee’s past donation would make the scam more believable. However, since Lee no longer holds any Litecoin, any LTC giveaway purportedly coming from Lee is unlikely to be true.
By press time, all of the fake Lee accounts mentioned in this article are still active on Twitter.
