Renowned rapper Curtis James Jackson III, also known as “50 Cent,” has claimed that his X account and website were hacked, leading to the promotion of a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scam.
In a scheme known as a “Rug pull,” fraudulent developers created a new cryptocurrency token called “GUNIT.”
They exploited Jackson’s vast X following of about 12.9 million to attract investors and inflate the token’s price before depleting its value.
Consequently, the token’s price plummeted to $0.00016.
On June 21, Jackson informed his 32.8 million Instagram followers that his X account and website had been compromised, resulting in significant financial losses for the victims.
“Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down.
“Whoever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes,” Jackson stated, emphasizing that he has “no association with this crypto.”
He shared three images depicting posts from the crypto community about the GUNIT memecoin, showcasing a classic rug-pull pattern with a sharp price increase followed by a steep decline.
Cointelegraph reviewed trading data of the GUNIT memecoin on Dex Screener, revealing that multiple wallet addresses sold substantial amounts of the token.
Four accounts sold over $100,000 of the memecoin following its promotion on Jackson’s X account.
50 Cent asserted that over $300 million was defrauded from users, a figure that significantly exaggerates the actual value made by anonymous traders from selling GUNIT tokens.
At the time of publication, the token’s total trading volume was $19.4 million.
This incident follows a series of celebrities being linked to cryptocurrency launches recently.
Caitlyn Jenner is one of the latest celebrities to delve into the crypto memecoin market, causing industry confusion with mixed messages surrounding her token launch.
Initial speculations about her X account being hacked were dismissed but later resurfaced. Simultaneously, she defended the JENNER token.
On May 27, Cointelegraph reported that Jenner’s X account posted a statement asking followers to “send me some of your favourite memecoins.”
Although she later removed the post, she continued to promote JENNER.
“That ad for a third party token was taken down! As I have said from the beginning the only focus I have is $Jenner and the ad I posted confused too many people, and was not worth it.
“Like I had said time and time again I’m fully focused on my token $Jenner,” she posted on X.
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