Breaking Bad Actor Dean Norris’ X Account Used for $8M Meme Coin Scam

Dean Norris, greatest identified for his position in Breaking Unhealthy, has change into the goal of hackers once more.

His X account was lately compromised to advertise a fraudulent meme coin named DEAN.

Particulars from the Exploit

An X consumer who shared a screenshot of the deleted posts described the incident as one of many “most plausible” scams they’d ever seen on the platform.

The assault started with a tweet from Norris’s official account on the social media platform, which falsely introduced the creation of his cryptocurrency. The publish acknowledged, “I’ve determined to launch my very own crypto coin named Dean,” and included a contract deal with for the pretend token.

To make the rip-off seem credible, the hackers additionally shared a photoshopped picture of Norris holding a notepad with the token’s launch date and the ticker image “$DEAN.”

The perpetrators additionally circulated a manipulated video through which the actor appeared to verify the launch date.

Within the five-second clip, he was saying, “Hey, it’s me, Dean, and uh… January twenty fifth, I’m declaring it’s actual.”  It was later revealed that the criminals had used Cameo, a platform the place subscribers pays celebrities for customized video messages, to provide the deceptive clip.

On January 26, Norris regained management of his profile and posted a video addressing the scenario:

“That is Dean Norris truly, and that complete loopy crypto sh*t was an entire pretend rip-off. I used to be hacked, and I don’t know, I simply acquired it again,” he defined.

Nonetheless, by then, a number of victims had already seen and acted upon the bogus announcement. Blockchain data from DEX Screener revealed that the DEAN token reached a market cap of $8.4 million on January 25. Nonetheless, its worth has since plummeted to $53,000.

Regardless of the 61-year-old’s makes an attempt to clear his title, many locally blamed him for making it simpler for hackers to govern what they thought was his official Telegram channel, “DeanNorrisofficial.”

In a subsequent statement, the star clarified that he doesn’t have a Telegram account, not often makes use of X, and was unaware he had been compromised. He additionally denied accusations from Reddit claiming he launched the coin for a “pump and dump” scheme.

A Sample of Focusing on Celebrities

This marks the second time the TV star’s account has been exploited. In September 2024, his social media profile was used to advertise one other pretend token, SCHRADER, primarily based on his Breaking Unhealthy character, which was hosted on the TRON blockchain.

The September incident was additionally half of a bigger hacking spree uncovered by blockchain investigator ZachXBT in November. The scenario concerned as many as 15 common accounts on X and Instagram, together with these of singer Usher and rapper Wiz Khalifa.

Unhealthy actors used these profiles to advertise counterfeit meme cash on the Pump.enjoyable platform, collectively stealing as a lot as $3.5 million.

Earlier within the yr, a number of accounts belonging to main gamers within the crypto area, together with Litecoin, Foresight Ventures, and Holoworld AI, had been compromised and used to push rip-off tokens.

Within the newest incident of the identical nature, hackers gained control of Nasdaq’s X account and used it to advertise a pretend meme coin referred to as STONKS, inflicting its market cap to rise to $80 million earlier than they rugged it.