The official X account of the world-famous heavy metal band, Metallica, was exploited to promote a Solana (CRYPTO: SOL)-based memecoin.

What Happened: Widely-followed cryptocurrency influencer Ricards posted late Tuesday night about the scam, sharing a now-deleted post that showed hackers falsely advertising a token called METAL, in collaboration with ticketing giant Ticketmaster and cryptocurrency payments platform MoonPay.

METAL's market cap spiked to $3.37 million within minutes of the post, only to crash to $30,000 at the time of writing, according to price tracking platform Dexscreener.

Metallica's team has regained control over the account and deleted all posts associated with the token. Neither Ticketmaster nor MoonPay have confirmed any involvement with the dubious token.

Why It Matters: This incident is not the first of its kind. Just a few days ago, rapper 50 Cent's X account was reportedly compromised, leading to a multimillion-dollar memecoin scam. The scam involved a new token, GUNIT, which was used to attract investors and inflate its price, only to see its value plummet shortly thereafter.

Prior to that, Solana-based memecoin promoted by Hulk Hogan reportedly suffered a $15 million loss in market cap within minutes of Hogan deleting hacked social posts promoting the cryptocurrency.

These incidents highlight the growing trend of cybercriminals exploiting celebrity social media accounts to promote memecoins and execute pump-and-dump schemes, causing significant financial losses for unsuspecting investors. A report in January by Blockchain security firm Blockfence uncovered an intricate scam method that has defrauded over 42,000 victims of more than $32 million since April 2023.

The U.S. witnessed a staggering 53% increase in losses from Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE), Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) and other crypto investment scams in 2023, reaching a total of $3.94 billion

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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