The official account of the rock band X started posting about a Solana token with the ticker METAL on June 26. Subsequently, scammers made fake claims to inflate the price of the Solana token.
They promoted METAL as a means of payment for Metallica merchandise and events, and even falsely advertised a discounted rate for Ticketmaster purchases using the token, although no official announcement by Ticketmaster had been made at the time. The scammers also involved fintech firm MoonPay in their scheme, claiming that METAL would offer staking rewards and airdrops for holders.
The token’s market cap briefly peaked at $3.37 million shortly after its launch. It appears that the Metallica team has since regained control of the account, and all posts made by the attacker have been removed.
The cryptocurrency community has pointed to Sahil Arora, a notorious scammer responsible for several similar incidents over recent weeks. Meanwhile, Jason Derulo, who was involved in the matter, faced criticism from the crypto community, while Arora has been at the center of controversies on multiple occasions.
Arora reportedly acted as a middleman for various celebrities, exploiting their lack of knowledge about web3. Social media platform X suspended Arora’s account “@Habibi_Comm” due to his involvement in multiple pump and dump schemes.
Despite mention of other celebrities like Jason Derulo, his telegram channel, at the time of publication, does not reference Metallica.