McDonald’s Instagram Hack Leads to $700,000 Solana Crypto Scam

On August 21, cryptocurrency scammers successfully hacked the official McDonald’s Instagram account.

They used the brand’s social media account to promote and subsequently rug pull a memecoin called “Grimace,” named after the fast-food chain’s purple mascot.?

The scam resulted in losses exceeding $700,000 for unsuspecting investors.

The hackers leveraged McDonald’s massive Instagram following of 5.1 million to push their fraudulent token. They made a series of posts describing the sham memecoin as a “McDonald’s experiment on Solana,” lending an air of legitimacy to the scam.

According to blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps, the scammers’ strategy was methodical.?

The thieves initially used Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun to acquire and control 75% of the total circulating supply of the Grimace token before distributing these tokens among approximately 100 different wallets to hide their ownership.

hacker owned 75% of the supply

used multiple addresses to buy on Pumpfun simultaneously, then spread into ~100 addresses

sold for $700k

thanks, @McDonalds ?? https://t.co/Gt9yb3V3qp pic.twitter.com/ojLoiJamdy

— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) August 21, 2024

Despite numerous red flags, the official McDonald’s account promotion and the appeal of quick profits led to significant trading activity.?

Within 24 hours, the Grimace token saw a trading volume of about $26 million. In 30 minutes, its market capitalization went from a few thousand dollars to an astonishing $25 million, as evidenced by DexScreener.