Posing as Walmart, scammers send crypto surging 25%
CNN
In what appears to be a massively successful pump and dump scheme, cryptocurrency litecoin surged around 25% early Monday after a falsified news release said Walmart would begin accepting the payment for online purchases.
Investors had plenty of reason to believe the news was true: A verified litecoin Twitter account tweeted out a link to the announcement, which had appeared on the press release service GlobeNewswire. The press release looked legitimate enough, including (made-up) quotes from Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. Walmart had just posted a job for a cryptocurrency expert to work at its corporate headquarters. And several major news organizations picked up the news. The announcement, however, was fake, a Walmart (WMT) spokesperson confirmed. Walmart is not accepting litecoin, and litecoin deleted its tweet. An hour after the announcement came out, Litecoin's price fell from more than $220 back to $178 --— around where it was trading before the false release went out.
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