Martin Lewis fury after over blue-ticked 'crypto trading expert' impersonator on Twitter

3 April 2023, 15:31 | Updated: 3 April 2023, 15:43

Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis has spoken out after being impersonated by a "crypto trading expert" with a blue-ticked Twitter profile, as he warned followers over the bogus account.

The account, which featured a picture of Mr Lewis, amassed tens of thousands of followers, but appears to have since been taken down.

On Monday, Martin told his 2.2 million Twitter followers he had flagged the fake account, and voiced surprise that the account was able to get a blue tick.

Posting a link to the fake account, which had the handle @MartinXLewis, the personal finance guru wrote: “So this FAKE ACCOUNT... promoting crypto has a blue tick?

“Let's see whether it is taken down when I report this impersonation,” he added.

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Up until last year, blue ticks had been used on the platform to verify notable public figures and official company accounts.

But following Elon Musk’s takeover of company last year, the tech billionaire introduced a subscription service allowing anyone to have the symbol next to their name for an $8 monthly fee.

It's just the latest scam account targeting Martin Lewis' followers, some of whom called for Twitter to address issues with the current blue tick system.

One user wrote: “@elonmusk come on man, Real Martin Lewis (MartinSLewis) does good for the people of the UK and you're now allowing impersonators to get a Blue Tick which pretends to be him in order to scam people.

He added: "They don't say it’s parody, literally purporting to be a new branch of his business.”

Another said: “Twitter needs to create a better verification process so that this doesn’t happen. Sorry this has happened to you Martin.”

Last month, Mr Elon Musk announced that from April 1, legacy verified users would lose their blue ticks unless they paid the monthly fee for Twitter Blue.

But Twitter doesn't appear to have followed through on this, with legacy users' checkmarks still being shown alongside paying customers.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the removing legacy verification badges may take a while as the process may call for a lot of manual elements.