- Robinhood said Vlad Tenev’s verified X account was compromised on Thursday and used to promote an unauthorised token called Vladhood (VLAD); the company secured the account and removed the post.
- The fraudulent post falsely claimed VLAD was the “official mascot of Robinhood Chain” and that the token would be listed on the Robinhood app.
- On-chain trackers estimated the attacker took in about 650 ETH, roughly US$1.2 million and the post drew more than 175,000 views in under 20 minutes.
Robinhood said hackers briefly took over Chief Executive Vlad Tenev’s verified X account on Thursday and used it to promote a fraudulent meme coin, before the company secured the account and removed the post.
“Our CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was compromised and posted a fake promotion for a meme coin,” Robinhood’s communications team said, adding that the token was unauthorised and that it was “working with X to restore access”. The token was called Vladhood and trading as VLAD.
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The deleted post made two false claims to borrow credibility from Tenev’s verified profile. It described VLAD as the “official mascot of Robinhood Chain”, the company’s own blockchain, and said the token would be listed on the Robinhood app. Robinhood disowned both.
On-chain records show the VLAD contract was deployed about 46 minutes before the hacked post appeared, a sign the scheme was planned in advance. The post gathered more than 175,000 views in under 20 minutes before users flagged it as a scam and warned others not to buy.
On-chain trackers estimated the attacker took in around 650 ETH, worth roughly US$1.2 million (AU$1.72 million), across about 1,868 trades.
A separate on-chain estimate put the fees collected by the token’s creator wallet at about US$59,000 (AU$84,370), a narrower slice than the total proceeds. Robinhood did not say whether any of its users lost money, and the token was not connected to the company in any way.
Memecoin Scam Just Weeks After Launch
The scam leaned on Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 network Robinhood launched on 1 July to trade tokenised stocks and other real-world assets.
Robinhood pitched the chain as infrastructure for tokenised equities when it went live three weeks ago.
Read more: Trump Backs Ethics Provision, Clearing Key Obstacle for Landmark Crypto Bill
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