Hackers impersonate Saudi crown prince to promote scam memecoins

Hackers have impersonated the Saudi crown prince to launch and promote fraudulent memecoin cryptocurrencies.

In a tweet on 17 February, an X user warned that the Saudi Law Conference Administration’s official X account was hacked, a statement that the conference later confirmed to be true.

it should be obvious. but in case it's not: the SaudiLawConf twitter has been hacked and repurposed, as confirmed on their insta.

there is no official saudi coin. pic.twitter.com/l8JdfIziuU

— barry (@badlydrawnbarry) February 17, 2025

The hackers took over the conference’s account which is managed by the Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman and posted ‘Launch of Official Saudi Arabia Memecoin 15:00 UTC.”

What gave it away

In this hack as in any other high-profile X hack for promoting crypto scams, many X users had fallen for the deception without checking.

The scam was obvious though, as there was no official government announcement, nor was there clear information on the project’s tokenomics or the underlying utility.

Also, the Saudi Law Conference promptly released a statement warning the public that its X handle had been taken over by bad actors. Part of the statement read:

“We confirm that we are urgently working to regain control of the account and disclaim all responsibility for any unauthorized posts made during this period. We also apologize to our followers for any inconvenience this may cause and urge everyone to exercise caution and refrain from engaging with any suspicious content posted through the account until further notice.”

The fraudsters had however promoted two scams — the “Official Saudi Arabia Memecoin” and “FALCON Memecoin” — and had shared purported contract addresses for the two projects.

One of many cases

Cases of scammers hacking high-profile persons to promote scam crypto projects is an old tactic found among hackers.

Just recently, the BBC journalist Nick Robinson was hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency through a phishing attack.

I really hope you didn’t buy any Today cryptocurrency! I’m afraid my account was hacked. Back online now. I’ll never point out the inaccuracies in an @elonmusk again 🤥 pic.twitter.com/KCgemXQpU3

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) February 11, 2025

As confirmed by a security expert, such attackers target public figures with a large following to exploit their followers who often fall for the scams before realizing it.

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