Ever since Metallica announced their upcoming album 72 Seasons, a weird phenomenon has been taking shape over on YouTube. You may have noticed one or more channels promoting a live interview with one of the band members and the promise that the whole record will be streamed. If you click on the video, you’re taking to an obviously archived interview from when the band was promoting S&M II and ads in the live chat promoting a cryptocurrency scheme backed by Metallica.
Well it turns out, rather unsurprisingly to anyone paying attention to this kind of shit, that it’s all one massive scam. If you were dumb enough to send any crypto to the website promising to “double your money,” then you deserve to lose that money.
According to KMAN, a 51-year-old man from Manhattan, Kansas lost roughly $25,500 after transferring that much in Bitcoin over to the Metalli-scam. The guy then reported his losses to the Riley County Police Department, who are investigating the “theft by deception.”
As a result, Metallica put out a statement in a bid to help fans steer clear of such schemes.
In the wake of last week’s exciting news of our new song, new album, and new tour, unfortunately the ugly side of social media made an appearance. Many of you have let us know about YouTube channels and live streams, as well as websites, claiming to offer Metallica Crypto giveaways in conjunction with last week’s announcement.
Let’s be as clear as possible. These are scams. They’re being streamed on fake YouTube channels posing to be ours and all pointing to websites that we do not run. Please remember — all of our official social media channels are verified. Always look for official verification before believing something wild and crazy to be true. We thank all of you who have been vigilant in reporting these live streams to YouTube and to us… please don’t let up!
As a reminder, these are the official Metallica channels:
Website: metallica.com, livemetallica.com
Instagram: @metallica
YouTube: @metallica
Facebook: @metallica
TikTok: @metallica
Twitter: @metallicaBe familiar with the symbols that indicate an official channel and report anything that is a scam!
It seems absolutely wild to think someone would send that much money without doing their due diligence first. Especially given the recent failures that the crypto sector has dealt with in recent weeks. Still, it’s a bummer that the money was lost but if something promises to “double your money” and it seems too good to be true, that means it very likely is too good to be true in the first place.