McDonald’s Instagram Compromised to Promote Solana-Based Memecoin ‘Grimace’

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Last updated:

August 22, 2024 00:56 EDT

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The official Instagram account of McDonald’s Corp., suffered a hack on Wednesday to promote a memecoin scam named after the character Grimace.

Scammers took control of the fast-food giant’s social media account, promoting “GRIMACE” token, a Solana-based memecoin. These perpetrators apparently claimed that they made $700,000 in stolen money.

Per a screenshot circulating online, the scammers noted that the users have just been “rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w.” This caption was visible to over 5.1 million followers for a brief period of time, until McDonald’s took over.

Rug pulls are illegal crypto schemes that looks legitimate by promoting fake tokens, until the scammers decide to suddenly drain investors funds.

“Thank you for the $700,000 in Solana,” they wrote in the description.

Further, Pump.fun data revealed that the memecoin token GRIMACE rapidly rose, reaching a market cap of around $20 million. This was within 30 minutes of the token pump by hackers.

However, the memecoin plummeted soon after the hacker dumped their holdings, with market cap falling below $600K.

In a statement to the New York Post, McDonald’s team noted that they are aware of the “isolated incident.”

“We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time.”

Additionally, Guillaume Huin, a senior marketing director for McDonald’s, also had his X and Instagram social media accounts hacked. Scammers posted the fake coin promotions on his compromised accounts, one of which read, “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana.”

SOL-Based Memecoin Scams on the Rise

Early this year, Solana memecoin honeypot scam dubbed ‘BONKKILLER’ had hit a whopping $328 trillion market cap by freezing token holders’ accounts.

In another instance, Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney’s X account got hacked, only to promote a Solana-based memecoin ‘SWEENEY.’ The scammers claimed that the token is an official launch from the star herself.

Interestingly, some of the memecoin scam methods have even fooled some of the industry’s renowned “rug pull detectors,” as revealed by blockchain security firm Blockfence.