By CCN.com: In their most current mutant form, the Bitcoin Evolution/Bitcoin Revolution scams are using X-Men star Hugh Jackman as bait. According to the fraudsters, the Australian actor who is best known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise has stumbled upon a ‘wealth loophole’ which can make anyone a millionaire within four months.
Micky initially reported the scam which is being pitched mostly to Australians by promising returns of over 10,000 percent.
One of the bitcoin scam’s landing pages adopts the layout, style and tone of a mainstream news website. However, there are some dead giveaways that suggest it’s not a legitimate online publication. This includes the fact that all the links on the page point to a website designed to harvest visitor information.
Additionally, the fabricated feature shows it has a suspiciously high number of comments; nearly 4,000 and 12,000 social media shares. Clicking on the comments takes you directly to the same information-harvesting website.
For the trained eye, the landing page also lacks any legal or corporate information at the bottom that any legitimate organization would have. One of the scam’s ad banners show Jackman speaking with the Bitcoin logo in the background.
However, on a closer look the Jackman’s image appears to have been cropped and inserted. This was to give the impression he was speaking at a Bitcoin event. To their credit the scammers have used nearly-flawless English, a weak point for other well-known scams.
Jackman supposedly revealed the details of the ‘wealth loophole’ in an interview with Australian media personality Waleed Aly:
And right now, my number one money-maker is a new cryptocurrency AutoTrader Program . It’s the single biggest opportunity I’ve seen in my entire lifetime to build a small fortune fast.
To create a sense of urgency, the scammers allege the scheme is scaring banks. Consequently the banks want to ‘shut it down for good’ and therefore willing investors should hurry while it lasts. The scammers even allege that one of Australia’s big four financial institutions, the National Australia Bank, had attempted to stop an interview Jackman had conducted promoting the scheme from being aired.
To give the scheme some credence, the scammers even fabricated a list of transactions. The list showed that Jackman earned ten of thousands of dollars every week from the scheme.
The scheme claims the profits are made by trading using auto-trading software. This technology, the scammers claim, is ‘backed by some of the smartest tech minds to ever exist’. The scammers then go on to drop names of highly recognizable figures such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stage a comeback, scams of this nature have begun increasing in frequency. Just last week five-time Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo was being used to promote a bitcoin scam. And just like in the case of Hugh Jackman, this one was also offering unrealistically high returns.