According to Cointelegraph: Hackers breached the official McDonald’s Instagram account on August 21, making off with over $700,000 in Solana by promoting a fake meme coin based on the fast-food giant's purple mascot, Grimace. The scammers used McDonald’s social media presence to advertise the fraudulent token, deceiving the page’s 5.1 million followers.
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The hackers posted multiple messages claiming the Grimace token was part of a "McDonald’s experiment on Solana." These posts quickly gained traction, leading to a surge in the token’s value. Blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps reported that the hacker initially used the Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun to acquire 75% of the total supply of Grimace tokens, subsequently distributing them across approximately 100 different wallets.
The memecoin’s market capitalization skyrocketed from just a few thousand dollars to an astounding $25 million within 30 minutes, according to data from DexScreener. However, the hacker then dumped their holdings, causing the token's value to plummet to as low as $650,000 within 40 minutes.
Bubblemaps confirmed that the hackers managed to extract a total profit of approximately $700,000 in Solana from the scam. After executing the rug pull, the hacker updated the McDonald’s Instagram bio to boast about their success, stating, "Sorry mah n-gga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana."
McDonald’s has since regained control of its Instagram account, removing the fraudulent posts and offensive bio. In a statement to the New York Post, McDonald’s acknowledged the “isolated incident” and apologized to its fans, assuring that the issue has been resolved.