Photo credit: Jill Evans/ Pexels

McDonald’s official Instagram account was hacked by a scammer who made approximately $700,000 after falsely promoting Grimace (GRIMACE), a meme token on Solana. 

Although the post was later deleted, several users took screenshots of the cyber attack and shared them on the X social media platform. The fake Instagram post created by the hacker claimed that GRIMACE would be a “McDonald’s experiment on Solana.”

The scammer is also suspected of having hacked the X account of McDonald’s senior market director, Guillaume Huin. Impersonating Huin, the scammer asked GRIMACE holders to share their Instagram account ID in the comment section so McDonald’s could follow them. 

Following the fake promotions, GRIMACE noticed a significant surge in its value almost touching the $0.10779. The massive jump in GRIMACE’s value was noticed on Aug. 21 at 3:15 p.m. UTC, according to the data from Photon. However, after 15 minutes, the Solana-based meme token closed its trade at around $0.0021 after the hacker dumped their tokens, a rug pull activity. 

After benefiting from the pump, the scammer, trying to humiliate the victims even more, changed the description of the official McDonald’s Instagram bio, stating, “You have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w. Thank you for the $700,00 in Solana.” The scammer put an Indian flag emoji next to the mocking bio, indicating that the hacker could be from India.  
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