Ripple is once again warning the crypto community about a troubling rise in scams targeting XRP holders. This time, scammers are using stolen YouTube accounts that pose as the company’s official channel.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse shared a message on X on Wednesday. He noted that scammers are using the current crypto bull market to impersonate Ripple and push fake XRP giveaways.
Like clockwork, with success and market rallies, scammers ramp up their attacks on the crypto community, Garlinghouse wrote. PLEASE BEWARE of the latest scam targeting the XRP family on YouTube and impersonating Ripple’s official account!
Hackers stealing YouTube accounts to run fake giveaways
According to Ripple’s official X account, bad actors are hijacking real YouTube channels, often, with a large number of subscribers, and rebranding them to look like Ripple’s verified page. These hacked accounts then livestream or post videos that promise huge XRP giveaways that are not real.
Community members spot active scam campaigns
An X user named XtinaRP reported that one of these scams was still active as of Tuesday. The imposter was using a YouTube account with 176,000 subscribers to promote a fake “100 million XRP giveaway,” falsely claiming it was sponsored by Ripple.
“This one looks very convincing. Scammers are using accounts with 176K subs to promote a fake 100M XRP event. Ripple will NEVER conduct giveaways. Stay cautious!” the user cautioned.
Ripple’s actual YouTube channel has over 81,000 subscribers. YouTube has not yet responded to these issues.
Ripple’s past legal battle with YouTube
This is not the first time Ripple has acted against such scams. In April 2020, Ripple filed a lawsuit against YouTube, accusing the platform of allowing and profiting from fake content that impersonated Ripple executives.
The lawsuit mentioned scams that use similar tactics to those currently in play, spear-phishing attacks that take over a user’s account, erase its content, and then rebrand it to look like a crypto company or influencer promoting a fake giveaway.
Ripple eventually dropped the lawsuit in March 2021 after coming to an agreement with YouTube. At that time, Garlinghouse said both sides had decided to work together to fight online scams.