Have you seen this sneaky Metallica crypto scam?

Metallica ended a seven-year break with their new album, “72 Seasons.” Recently, fake YouTube videos have been appearing online. These videos pretend to show new interviews with the band talking about their album.

According to Forbes, these videos trick fans with a “download” QR code that seems to offer the unreleased album. However, the QR code actually leads to a cryptocurrency scam.

What is the Metallica crypto scam?

The video promotes a QR code that leads to a website claiming to be related to Metallica. It lets you pick Bitcoin or Ethereum and invites you to a “Metallica crypto giveaway.” But this giveaway doesn’t really exist.

The scam tricks you into spending a little Bitcoin, promising to double your money right away. Sadly, people have already lost about $25,000 in Bitcoin to this scam.

Credit: killerguitarrigs.com
Credit: killerguitarrigs.com

The video looks real because it uses the same logo and channel name as Metallica’s official channel. It even has a lot of subscribers, 19,100, but that’s much less than the 9.21 million subscribers on the real Metallica channel.

On YouTube, each username is unique, but many people can use the same channel name. The misleading username was “@Memetallica” instead of “@Metallica.” The so-called “live” interview video actually showed an old interview from when COVID lockdowns were happening.

Credit: killerguitarrigs.com

Scammers often target big events, pretending to offer giveaways or discounted tickets. Always be careful with usernames that are slightly wrong or tricky words. Check with official accounts to make sure any offers are actually real.