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.
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.