India‘s prime minister appears to tweet out a BTC scam

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi‘s Twitter account was hacked again in December, with scammers claiming that India had adopted BTC as national tender, and 500 BTC are available for immediate distribution to Indian nationals who sign up via a phishing link. The tweet was briefly viewable to the public and Modi‘s 73.4 million followers before it was taken down. The year prior, a cybercrime group known as "John Wick" hacked the prime minister‘s Twitter account and posted messages asking his followers to make crypto donations.

Several hypotheses exist as to why Modi became a target of these Bitcoin scam hacks. One possible motive was revenge for the ongoing Bitcoin scandal in India‘s Karnataka state. According to Indian media outlets, Karnataka police and governmental officials allegedly received 12,900 BTC in bribes from hacker Srikrishna Ramesh, who was arrested for hacking three crypto exchanges and other websites in the previous years. When Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai asked about the issue in a meeting with Modi in November, the prime minister allegedly brushed off the issue. India currently faces a chaotic regulatory environment regarding the state of crypto affairs in the country.

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