Beware of Fake Apple event touting bitcoin scams

Scammers are attempting to fool people into believing that Apple will give away free Bitcoin to anyone watching the “Unleashed" event.

Bitcoin scammers took advantage of the September release of the iPhone 13 to defraud users of $69,000. They’ll almost certainly try the same stunt during Apple’s “Unleashed" event on October 18 — and they’ll probably do it better.

Whatever lessons they learned about deceiving people the last time, their September farce involved streaming a series of genuine interviews with Tim Cook. The interviews were called from anywhere they could find and began streaming early in order to be live when people were looking for the real Apple event.

Pop-up messages overlaid on the interview videos directed users to a special website, www.2021.apple.org. This website was designed to look similar to Apple’s, except it extolled bitcoin and promised a giveaway.

The con involved claiming that Apple would double a bitcoin donation. If a user sent between 0.1 and 20 Bitcoins via a QR code link, Apple would allegedly send back twice the amount.

That particular website was quickly removed and is unlikely to reappear. After earning nearly $70,000 from it, the same or other scammers are attempting it again.

Apple is not going to give away Bitcoin. Apple will not broadcast interviews with Tim Cook or anyone else in advance of the “Unleashed" event. And Apple will not direct anyone to anywhere other than apple.com or possibly its own YouTube channel.