McDonald’s Instagram account hacked by promoters of Grimace coin

McDonald’s Corp’s account on Instagram was hacked Aug 21 in an apparent scam involving a cryptocurrency named after Grimace.

Screenshots published by an X user showed a post on the chain’s Instagram leading to a “McDonald’s experiment” on the blockchain platform Solana. Another encouraged users to post whether they owned a coin named after Grimace, the chain’s purple character, before an image emerged saying participants had been scammed out of US$700,000 (RM3.05mil).

Speculators are issuing thousands of so-called meme coins – often digital images of dogs or cartoon characters tied to blockchains – on a daily basis. The coins are often targets of pump-and-dump schemes, in which creators promote them on X and other platforms, and once other buyers come in, dump their holdings.

In a statement, McDonald’s said an “isolated incident” had affected its social media accounts. “We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologise to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time,” the company said.

The posts weren’t visible on McDonald’s account as of 5.30pm New York.

Crypto-related scams and frauds are an area of significant concern for regulators, and users on social media platforms have been repeatedly targeted in these schemes.

Social media accounts belonging to celebrities, politicians, influencers and major corporations on networks such as Instagram and X have been hijacked with posts encouraging users to buy a particular token or to hand over their login credentials to phishing sites.

In other cases, scammers use AI-based image and audio generation tools to create social videos that appear to be of celebrities and influencers promoting a given cryptocurrency when no such endorsement has taken place. – Bloomberg