50 Cent’s social media accounts and website were hacked by a crypto scammer this past week, with the culprit reportedly making $300 million in profits as a result of the “pump-and-dump” scheme.
On Friday (June 21), a post believed to have been written by Fif promoting a cryptocurrency token dubbed “$GUNIT” appeared on his X account, which simply read “$GUNIT for winners only…” In response, a number of users purchased the coin, causing the price of the token to rise exponentially within an hour of the post.
The following day, the rapper and entertainment mogul took to Instagram to announce that his X account and ThisIs50 website were both compromised and that he was not responsible for the post promoting the “$GUNIT” token.
“My Twitter & Thisis 50.com was hacked,” the 48-year-old wrote in an Instagram post on Saturday (June 22). “I have no association with this Crypto. Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down. Who ever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes.”
Also referred to as a “rug pull,” the crypto scheme involving the fraudulent “$GUNIT” coin is par for the course in the blockchain community, as multiple celebrities’ social media accounts and websites have been hacked to promote a new token, only to cash out once the hype around the coin has peaked before steeply declining in value.
According to various outlets, Fif’s claim that the scheme netted sammers $300 million has been challenged, as the “$GUNIT” token had a total trading value of $19.4 million as of Saturday (June 22), when the fraud was exposed. However, a number of scammers made upwards of $100,000 from sales of the memecoin, with Dex Screener reporting that one coin holder sold $721,000 worth of the “$GUNIT” token alone.
This is not the first time 50 Cent has been associated with cryptocurrency, as he once claimed to have earned 700 bitcoins from sales of his 2014 studio album, Animal Ambiton. Yet, the rapper would later file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015, claiming he never “owned either a bitcoin account or any bitcoin” during the legal proceedings related to that case.
See 50 Cent’s Instagram post below.
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