(INDIANAPOLIS) – Indiana’s state treasurer is NOT promoting cryptocurrency, much less running an online sweepstakes for it.
Somebody hijacked @Hoosiers4Kelly, the Twitter account for state treasurer Kelly Mitchell’s unsuccessful run for Congress two years ago. The account tweeted a flood of supposed crypto giveaways before Mitchell’s office regained access.
Mitchell spokesman Ian Hauer says the state Republican Party spotted the unauthorized tweets and alerted the treasurer’s office, but it took some time to regain control because the account has been dormant for nearly two years, and was run by Mitchell’s campaign staff when it was active. Hauer says that made it difficult to work out what email addresses had been linked to the account to allow contact with Twitter customer service.
The account had reached nearly 360,000 followers before Mitchell’s office regained control and scrubbed all tweets. The account has now been deactivated, and Hauer says Twitter has agreed to accelerate the normal 30-day wait to terminate the @Hoosiers4Kelly handle entirely.
The hackers rewrote the account bio so it didn’t mention Mitchell. The name attached to the account was changed to just “Kelly,” with a bio describing the owner as a 25-year-old “crypto enthusiast” from California.
Mitchell’s official Twitter account at @TOS_Mitchell was unaffected.
The hack comes days after Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office and the Better Business Bureau warned scammers are increasingly using crypto either as the hook to lure victims, or as their preferred mode of payment. The Better Business Bureau warned one scam to watch out for involves scammers posing as celebrities to offer crypto giveaways.
Last year, four people were charged with hacking directly into Twitter’s internal systems to tweet crypto scams under the accounts of more than 100 celebrities, including President Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Kanye West.
