Recently one of the most popular footballers Kylian Mbappé’s official social accounts were involved in the scam. The scam was for a fake cryptocurrency which has led to huge losses for many people. They were able to use his X (formerly twitter) to launch a scam coin known as $MBAPPE. It launched with an intention of pumping and dumping it which caught many people in the scam.
An investor lost more than one million dollars in one hour. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain said the now-infamous investor registered a new address. They performed a operation involving 7,156 SOL, which at the time was approximately $1.03 million. However, the token’s value plummeted shortly and their investment went down to $9,200 only, a loss that amounted to 99%.
The $MBAPPE token initiated by using the Solana-based meme coin platform named Pump.fun. Even though the platform makes it quite easy for users to create tokens. It received a lot of backlash for making it easy to conduct such scams as this one. Subsequently to the posts made by the hacker on Mbappé’s X account, the price of $MBAPPE rose within minutes. However, when it reached the top, the value dropped to severely low levels. This proved devastating to most of the investors.
While most lost a great deal of money, one or two traders benefitted greatly out of the confusion that ensued. One investor, who invested only 2 SOL (about $286), sold at the correct moment and realized an incredible profit of 1,398 SOL. Another seasoned trader made a 4,330x return in just three minutes by cashing out with a massive 866.14 SOL, after just spending 0.2 SOL.
This is one of the latest in what is becoming a common occurrence of attackers using the name of famous personalities to benefit financially from those they con. In January this year, hackers also appropriated McDonald’s Instagram account to advertise a fake currency known as Grimace; this had a real ripple effect costing millions of dollars.
Fortunately for now, Mbappé deleted the posts but the damage was already done.
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