FOX Journalist Mocks XRP, Unknowingly Endorses Fake Airdrop

Veteran FOX Business journalist drops the ball by unintentionally promoting a phishing scam to nearly a million people.

Fox Man in a fantasy cartoon world, with XRP coins dropping from the clear blue sky.
Created by Kornelija Poderskytė from DailyCoin
  • Ripple recently made a breakthrough in its high-profile SEC case.
  • FOX Business journalist retweets a scam account, garnering 639K views.
  • The landmark ruling sets a positive precedent for PoS cryptocurrencies.

Charles Gasparino, a senior correspondent for FOX Business, took to Twitter to fire shots at XRP’s alleged ties to Ripple Labs. The highly-experienced journalist quotes a tweet by a fake XRP airdrop account, “Rippile XRP.” Soon after the tweet went live, numerous crypto traders on Twitter pointed out the imprudence.

The original tweet consisted of an ironic remark: “Ummm @Ripple keeps reminding me XRP and @Ripple are not connected in any way. I guess that ship has definitely sailed. Sad ha!” The quoted fake account is still visible despite tagging the actual Ripple Twitter account twice in the tweet.

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Ultimately, the negligent behavior by Mr. Gasparino garnered over 639,800 views for the phishing scam within 20 hours of the post. While the thread is flooded with sarcastic remarks by the crypto community, DailyCoin reached out to Mr. Gasparino for a comment but is yet to receive a response.

Ripple CTO Absolves Gasparino, Blames Twitter Rules

Interestingly, David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwarz, the CTO for Ripple and one of the original $XRP ledger architects, stepped in to defend the Fox correspondent. Instead of bashing Mr. Gasparino like his peers, Mr. Schwarz blamed Twitter’s alleged negligence of security issues.

Indeed, the faux Ripple account has a verified mark, which could be purchased for $8. “It’s too bad there’s no way to tell which accounts are authentic and which aren’t,” – remarked Ripple’s CTO. However, while there’s still a visual difference between the real and fake accounts in the handle, it still comes down to the lack of due diligence.


It’s also important to notice that the official Ripple handle has a golden verified check mark, which is easily distinguishable – Ripple’s official account posted several warning messages regarding the constant fake airdrops using $XRP’s name. As previously reported, XRP-related phishing scams surged hours since a U.S. Judge declared the altcoin not a security.

On the Flipside

  • While the Crypto Twitter audience frowns upon Mr. Gasparino for the dumb move, Twitter’s staff have done nothing to prevent the phishing account from reaching over half a million views. The fraudulent account is still fully active with 163K followers and a Twitter Verified checkmark.

Why This Matters

The odd situation illustrates several Twitter security issues and the importance of due diligence.

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This article is for information purposes only and should not be considered trading or investment advice. Nothing herein shall be construed as financial, legal, or tax advice. Trading forex, cryptocurrencies, and CFDs pose a considerable risk of loss.

Author
Tadas Klimasevskis

Tadas Klimaševskis is a DailyCoin Journalist, covering memecoins & latest developments. Tadas has moderate holdings in SHIB, HBAR, LTC, MATIC and a selection of low-cap meme currencies.

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