Cryptocurrency hackers claimed to have infiltrated McDonald’s official Instagram account and used it to promote a fake digital currency – making $700,000 in stolen money.
A screenshot circulating online shows McDonald’s Instagram page showing its caption changed to: “Sorry mah n–ga just got the rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thanks for $700,000 in Solana.”
The caption, which was visible to more than 5.1 million Instagram followers of the McDonald’s account, included an emoji depicting the flag of India.
McDonald’s said in a statement that it was “aware of an isolated incident that affected our social media accounts earlier today.”
“We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time,” McDonald’s said.
In cryptocurrency parlance, a “rug pull” is a type of scam in which the creators of a cryptocurrency withdraw funds from a coin’s liquidity pool and disappear — leaving investors with tokens that are worthless.
A “carpet pull” is usually executed by creating the fake token and then aggressively promoting it on social media and online cryptocurrency forums.
Creators build hype around the digital currency and encourage investors to get in on the ground floor before its value skyrockets.
When enough liquidity has been accumulated by pairing the fake currency with more established cryptocurrencies like ethereum, the creators withdraw the liquidity, causing the value to drop to zero.
The fraudsters then delete their social media accounts and remove their online presence – making it difficult for investors to track them down so they can recover their money.
Hackers claim they targeted McDonald’s social media account and used it to promote a fake meme coin known as “GRIMACE” on the Solana network – a high-performance blockchain platform designed for decentralized cryptocurrencies.
According to news site Cryptopolitan, within 30 minutes, the value of the fake code went from zero to $25 million before crashing.
Guillaume Huin, a senior marketing director for McDonald’s, appears to have had his account hacked as well.
His social media pages on X and Instagram included posts promoting the fake currency — one of which referred to “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana.”
Posts promoting the fake cryptocurrency were later deleted.
Grimace is the large purple character created by McDonald’s as part of the fast food chain’s marketing and advertising campaign.
New York Mets baseball fans, who are superstitious about their team, note that since Grimace threw out the ceremonial first pitch before a June 12 game against the Miami Marlins, the club turned its season around — going from a losing record in playoff contention.
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