For years, scammers impersonating renowned figures in the crypto spheres have been using Twitter for their scamming tricks but have now begun using Instagram as well. Charlie Lee, Litecoin founder, revealed that he has been dealing with an impersonator scamming innocent people of their crypto's on Instagram.
In a tweet, Lee, expressed his frustrations with Instagram, claiming that the network has done nothing to deal with a fake account that has been impersonating him for a while and scamming them. Lee stated that there could be other phony accounts and Instagram seems unconcerned about the alarms.
satoshi.ltc on @instagram has been impersonating me for months and scamming people. There are likely others and Instagram hasn't done anything about them.
My real Instagram account is SatoshiLite just like Twitter. Ironically my account has been banned for impersonation. Lol🤦♂️😠 https://t.co/kTnvHxRrL8
— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) October 15, 2019
Lee explained that despite raising the issue several times with Instagram, that instead of the social network closing the fake accounts, it has done just the opposite. Lee stated that his own Instagram account has been banned for impersonation, rather than the fake account.
Lee is not the only crypto big shot suffering the same dilemma. In a response to Lee’s tweet, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss stated that he, also was being impersonated on Instagram as well. The one half of the Winklevoss brothers stated that there was a person/profile that was impersonating him and running a crypto scam on Instagram as well.
Cameron likewise expressed his frustrations saying that he had reported it, various friends and associates have also reported the issue but the fake account is still active. Winklevoss called Instagram for help stating; “help would be appreciated!”
Decrypt reports that Twitter has been awash with numerous scams and Lee is no stranger to such incidents. Early last year, the Litecoin founder was at the center of a phony contest in which his name was used for a contest of 180 LTC where participants were asked to donate 0.3 LTC upfront to an address that was given by the scammers.
Issues of fake accounts and scammers have also affected renowned personalities in other industries as well. One of them was Tesla founder Elon Musk where his name was used for various con jobs. Elon’s account was impersonated by scammers who stated that Elon was looking to offer some BTC in an upcoming contest, but to participate one was supposed to donate some Ether tokens to a given address.
