Will the real Elon Musk please stand up? Twitter impersonator gets exposed

Elon Musk, Twitter and SpaceX CEO, pointed out a series of tweets from the handle @pnbarcelonlive. 

The profile speaks of the history of the human civilization being transient before touching upon the potential to last longer. It also says that humanity should preserve this. Musk tagged Twitter, commenting “ahem”. 

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The world’s richest man’s Twitter handle is @elonmusk, but the profile pretending to be the 51-year-old entrepreneur had the same profile picture but with “Elon Musk” written in a different font. 

Twitter users caught onto the impersonator, with one individual asking “How’d @pnbarcelonlive even get verified *before* impersonating you??”

Another user explained, “Because the accounts (e.g. @pnbarcelonlive) were already verified. They then became compromised/hacked via the usual means and are then made to masquerade as Elon. Twitter didn’t verify the accounts *as* Elon, they verified them as the person they previously were.” 

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The impersonator’s Twitter handle belongs to Paolo Barcelon, who describes himself as a gamer. The individual is a CODM (Call of Duty Mobile) “shoutcaster” for vagabonds.esports, and is an eSports radio anchor for Radyo Pilipinas 2 PH. 

Barcelon posted about his account being hacked a day back. 

“Someone has hacked my Twitter account and changed the name and my profile image. I have reported this to Twitter but am still waiting on a response. Hoping I can get my account back as I have been using this since 2017. The hackers used a message claiming they are from the Twitter support team claiming there are issues with my verified badge, then it logs you out and disables two-factor authentication”, he alerted all followers, adding, “In the meantime, please report my account as being hacked so Twitter can bring this back to me as soon as possible.” 

Others became wise to the act as well, tagging both Musk and the impersonator in their replies – one asking the scammer to “f**k off” while another asked both to hire the Twitter user.