Crypto
McDonald’s Instagram page hacked by crypto scammers who claim they stole $700K
Cryptocurrency hackers claimed they broke into McDonald’s official Instagram account and used it to promote a fake digital currency — making off with $700,000 in stolen money.
A screenshot circulating online shows the McDonald’s Instagram page showing its caption changed to: “Sorry mah n–ga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana.”
The caption, which was visible to the more than 5.1 million Instagram followers of McDonald’s account, included an emoji depicting the flag of India.
McDonald’s said in a statement it was “aware of an isolated incident that impacted 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 the parlance of cryptocurrency, a “rug pull” is a type of scam in which creators of a cryptocurrency withdraw funds from a coin’s liquidity pool and disappear — leaving investors with tokens that are worthless.
A “rug pull” is normally executed by creating the fake token and then aggressively promoting it on social media and cryptocurrency forums online.
The creators build hype around the digital coin and encourage investors to get in on the ground floor before its value skyrockets.
When enough liquidity has been amassed by pairing the fake coin with more established cryptocurrencies such as ethereum, the creators withdraw the liquidity, causing the value to plummet to zero.
The scammers then delete the social media accounts and remove their online presence — making it difficult for investors to track them down so that they can recover their money.
The 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.
Within 30 minutes, the fake token went from zero to $25 million in value before crashing, according to the news site Cryptopolitan.
Guillaume Huin, a senior marketing director for McDonald’s, appeared to have his account hacked as well.
His social media pages on X and Instagram included posts promoting the fake coin — one of which referred to “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana.”
The 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 ever since Grimace threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the June 12 game against the Miami Marlins, the club turned its season around — going from a losing record to playoff contention.
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Crypto
Wisconsin lawmakers crack down on cryptocurrency scams
MADISON, WI (WTAQ) — A new bipartisan bill is the state legislature is attempting to keep Wisconsinites safe from scammers.
Assembly Bill 968 creates consumer protections around cryptocurrency kiosks—and is aimed at stopping criminals from using crypto-kiosks to steal from victims. It was passed by the assembly last month and is now heading to the senate.
Americans lost over $330 million to scams involving crypto-kiosks in 2025.
As amended; the bill that passed the assembly would:
- set daily transaction limits at $1,000
- require cryptocurrency-kiosk operators to provide users with receipts
- implement consumer-identification measures for every transaction
- allow scam victims to receive refunds
“This also requires crypto-kiosk operators to be licensed as a money transmitter with the Department of Financial Institutions,” said bill co-author Representative Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah). “Right now there is no state statute with regards to these crypto machines, and there has to be some oversight.”
Over 700 cryptocurrency kiosks are located in convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, and other locations throughout Wisconsin.
Detective Kevin Bahl with the Green Bay Police Department says although these scams don’t discriminate, scammers usually target the senior population.
“That’s because they’re the ones with more of the built up funds; that they can lose a significant of money, but we have seen a lot of younger victims too,” said Det. Bahl. “Victims are losing anywhere between a couple thousand dollars, all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The senate will reconvene beginning the second week of March, where Rep. Kaufert believes they will pass Senate Bill 975. Then the bill will go to the governor for approval by April 1. If approved, the law would likely go into effect around June.
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