Scammers using the Litecoin Foundation’s name on both YouTube and Facebook have seemingly aged to steal a total of 309 LTC out of unsuspecting users who fell for a supposed giveaway.

The scam was exposed by David Schwartz, the Litecoin Foundation’s project manager, after first being spotted by crypto YouTuber Naomi Brockwell. At press time, the scammers’ accounts have been taken down.

The fake Litecoin Foundation’s YouTube channel published a seven-hour-long stream of this year’s Litecoin Summit and promoted throughout the video a supposed giveaway, where it asked users to send them between 10 and 1,000 LTC (between $398 and $398,000) to “immediately” receive a reward.

The address received a total of 309 LTC, equivalent to over $12,200. It’s unclear, however, if the funds were sent by the scammers themselves in an attempt to make the giveaway seem legitimate, or if unsuspecting users fell for the fake giveaway.

The strategy used by the scammers is a fairly common one in the cryptocurrency space. On the microblogging platform Twitter, scammers have even hacked the accounts of non-profit organizations to promote fake cryptocurrency giveaways. The scams were so widespread hackers hijacked verified Twitter accounts to swap their identities and appear to be verified prominent crypto personalities, only to promote fake giveaways.

In other scams, the attackers use fake news and fabricated celebrity endorsements to promote supposed cryptocurrency-related schemes where users can earn “easy profits” if they invest a specific amount. These scams have used the images of celebrities like Tesla’s Elon Musk, actress Kate Winslet, and more.

In this first quarter of this year, a report published by U.S.-based data security firm CipherTrace revealed that hackers managed to steal $356 million from cryptocurrency exchanges, and earn $851 million worth of crypto via fraud and fund misappropriation.

Featured image via Pixabay.