A man was cheated of 10 bitcoins by a fake Musk and lost $750,000

A German man was scammed out of 10 Bitcoins — currently worth $750,000 — by a Twitter scammer impersonating Elon Musk.
In an interview with the BBC, Sebastian (who did not want to use his real name) said he first sensed something was amiss when he saw the real Musk tweet "Dojo 4 Doge", an obviously nonsense statement.
An account resembling Elon Musk sent him a link to a transaction page and said: "We in the marketing department at Tesla headquarters came up with an idea: to hold a special gift event for all Bitcoin enthusiasts." The fake Tesla promotional website promised, "Send your Bitcoin to our wallet and we will return twice the amount. If that's not good enough, Tesla will also give away a brand new Tesla Model S to any user who sends 4 Bitcoins or 150 Ethereum."
The German man, who works in marketing in the IT industry, lost all his money. "I thought, this must be real, so I sent 10 bitcoins," he told the BBC.
Sebastian waited and waited, hoping to see a large amount of Bitcoin appear in his wallet. Then reality slapped him in the face. "I leaned my head against the couch cushions, my heart pounding," he said. "I just wanted to take a shortcut for my family, my early retirement fund and my kids' vacation. I went upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed. I woke up my wife and told her I had made a big mistake, a very big mistake."
A few hours later, he tried to contact the scammer and retrieve his Bitcoins, only to discover that they had been lost forever.
According to a screenshot of the scammer's tweet, it came from an account called "Elon Musk" (note the space), which was the same profile picture as Musk's at the time. Most importantly, it came with a blue checkmark, marking the Twitter account as verified.
Sebastian is not the first person to be scammed by someone taking advantage of Musk's popularity and bizarre Twitter activity. In early 2018, someone used a fake Musk account to run the exact same scam and made thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin. In the middle of last year, Musk's and other celebrities' Twitter accounts were hijacked to run another Bitcoin leak scam.