An American legendary heavy metal band, Metallica, warns their fans about the crypto giveaway scam floating on social media following the announcement of their highly anticipated album “72 Seasons”.

Exploiting the situation, the buzz, and the uproar around the launch of Metallica’s new album and their much-awaited tour, the attackers took advantage of social media impersonation and started to target metalheads. A 51-year-old reported from Manhattan that he was scammed for approximately $25,500 worth of Bitcoins as he transferred it to a fake Metallica YouTube channel.

However, the band quickly made their fans aware of the scammers, mentioned “the ugly side of social media,” and suggested that fans avoid such scams. “Let’s be as clear as possible. [Metallica crypto giveaways] are scams.”

According to a blockchain security firm, Certik, front-running scams on Youtube have risen by 500% in a year. This recent Metallica scam has also contributed to the numbers. Only after the band had reported against the fake Youtube channel the unofficial phishing website was discovered.

The band also mentioned the list of their official accounts on all social media platforms and asked the users to report anything that may seem fishy. Metallica encouraged the fans to limit their interaction to the official pages and not fall for anything that may sound “wild and crazy to be true.”

Usually, the easy targets for the scammers remain the non-crypto community, as the crypto community mostly understands the early signs of any fraudulent activity.

Even amid the humdrum of the FTX fallout, the scammers didn’t spare the victims of the FTX collapse. They spread the misinformation about the recovery plan by deepfaking the FTX CEO’s  Sam Bankman videos (old interview clips), manipulated and morphed them into something which promised a “giveaway” that would “double your cryptocurrency.”