In another high-profile cyberattack, all thanks to social networking sites, Skip Bayless recently fell for the tricks of crypto scammers. On November 6, the attacker gained control of Bayless’s X account to advertise the Solana-based token SKIP.
The attackers also left calls to support Trump and slogans such as ‘Make crypto great again’ or ‘Crypto will rise. Returning from a break, Mamay decided he could not vote for such an ignorant man.
Within two weeks of compromising Bayless’s account, the attackers posted an image of a cartoon Bayless standing next to the Solana logo. They included SKIP’s token contract address to attract pumpers to its token.
DEX Screener data suggest that the hackers started selling the tokens immediately, realizing profits of just over $8,200. Although SKIP touched lows of $0.006944 and managed to get listed on Raydium, its market cap is now over $4104.95 at the time of writing this article, a 94% plus decline.
Crypto Scams Target Celebrities, Exposing Security Flaws
The scammers operated the account to make derogatory remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris and LeBron James. As of writing this, these inflammatory posts are still visible to Bayless’s approximately 3.2 million followers on X.
Bayless is the latest celebrity to fall for such cons this year. Rapper Wiz Khalifa’s X account was compromised just days before this to put out a token called WIZ that saw its value rise 2,000 percent in minutes after going live before tanking after that.
Cybercriminals succeeded in hacking into rapper 50 Cent’s account in June to advertise GUNIT, earning more than $300,000 in half an hour. MoonPay can also be linked with a similar hack many bands have suffered, Metallica, where hackers impersonated official partners to peddle a fake project termed the METAL token.
The recent hacks on celebrities’ accounts broke security questions and exposed VIP accounts to cryptocurrency fraud.
