Crypto giveaway scams: the 2020 Twitter hack and deepfakes – The biggest crypto scams and scandals

In this lesson

see how the 2020 Twitter hack turned famous accounts into a bitcoin giveaway scam
learn how the "send 1, get 2 back" trick lives on in deepfake live streams and fake airdrops
get a simple test that exposes every fake giveaway

What happened in the 2020 Twitter hack? On 15 July 2020 attackers got into Twitter's internal admin tools and posted from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple and others: "send bitcoin and I will send double back". In a few hours the scam address received more than 100,000 dollars in bitcoin. The 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark from Florida pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2021 to three years in a juvenile facility; a British accomplice, Joseph James O'Connor, got five years in a US prison in 2023.

The crypto giveaway runs on a very special kind of billionaire: one who has never heard of bank transfers, loves strangers, and can only give you money after you send him some first.

The doubling machine has exactly one working part: the back door.

How did the hackers take over Twitter?#

Not by breaking any cryptography. They used social engineering – they phoned Twitter employees, pretended to be colleagues from IT support and sent them to a fake internal login page. With the stolen passwords and codes they reached an admin tool that could change the email address of any account.

Then they posted the same message from dozens of famous accounts, for example from Bill Gates's: everyone is asking me to give back, so for the next 30 minutes I will double all bitcoin payments sent to this address. Twitter stopped it by temporarily freezing posting for all verified accounts.

Timeline#

Date	What happened
15 July 2020	~130 accounts targeted; scam tweets from Obama, Biden, Musk, Gates, Apple and others
31 July 2020	US prosecutors charge three young men; Florida charges Graham Ivan Clark
March 2021	Clark pleads guilty: three years in a juvenile facility, then probation
June 2023	Joseph James O'Connor is sentenced in the US to five years in prison

The same trick, new costumes#

The Twitter hack was the most famous giveaway scam, but far from the only one. The script is always the same – a famous face, a "limited-time event", an address and a countdown – it just changes clothes:

Fake live streams. Hijacked YouTube channels are renamed to "Tesla" or "SpaceX" and stream an old interview with a QR code and a "send ETH, get double" banner.
Deepfakes. A deepfake video lets the "billionaire" announce the giveaway in his own voice. In January 2024 the bitcoin investor Michael Saylor said his team was taking down about 80 fake AI-generated videos of him every day.
Hacked verified accounts. Accounts of companies, politicians and crypto projects get hijacked – often through SIM swaps or phishing – and post a giveaway or a "surprise token launch".
Fake airdrops. "You are eligible for 5,000 tokens – connect your wallet to claim." There is nothing to claim; the page asks you to sign a transaction that hands your tokens to a drainer. How drainers work is explained in the lesson Security: drainers, signing and fake airdrops.

AI made all of this cheaper. According to Chainalysis, impersonation scams grew by about 1,400 % in 2025, and in the FBI's 2025 report, complaints involving AI-assisted fraud reached about 893 million dollars in losses.

Why does anyone fall for it?#

It is not about intelligence. The scam stacks several pressures at once:

Authority – a famous name and a verified badge.
Social proof – a fake "live" transaction feed showing others receiving double.
Urgency – "only the next 30 minutes", a countdown, "first 1,000 participants".
A small test amount – "just send 0.1 BTC to try". The fraudster only needs a few people to try.

Warning signs you could have seen#

Any offer that requires you to send crypto first. That is the whole scam, everything else is decoration.
"Double back", "returns to everyone" or "giveaway for the community" connected to an address.
A countdown or a "last chance". Real gifts do not expire in 30 minutes.
Comments switched off, or full of identical "it worked, thanks Elon!" messages.
An "airdrop" that asks you to connect a wallet and sign something you do not understand.
A famous account that suddenly talks about a crypto it never mentioned before.

A transaction cannot be called back

Crypto sent to a scammer is gone – there is no bank to reverse it. No real person, company or celebrity will ever double money you send them. If a giveaway asks you to send first, close the page; do not "test it with a little".

Common myths#

"It is a verified account, so it is really them." In 2020 the verified accounts were real – they were just being operated by someone else.
"I can see his face and hear his voice." That is exactly what deepfakes are made for.
"Others in the chat got paid." The chat and the transaction feed are part of the set.

Summary

In July 2020 attackers used social engineering on Twitter staff to post a bitcoin giveaway from famous accounts and collected over 100,000 dollars.
Graham Ivan Clark was sentenced to three years; Joseph James O'Connor to five years in a US prison.
Today the same trick runs on deepfake live streams, hacked accounts and fake airdrops.
Test: if you have to send crypto to receive crypto, it is a scam. Always.

More about phishing and fake apps is in the lesson Attacks on wallets.