Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among several high-profile individuals targeted by hackers on Twitter in an apparent Bitcoin scam.
The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.
“Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” a tweet from Mr Gates’s account said. “You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
The tweets were deleted just minutes after they first were posted.
All verified Twitter accounts marked with a blue tick have now been stopped from posting any tweets, and there are reports that password reset requests are also being denied.
Twitter said it was looking into the incident and would issue a statement soon.
On the official account of Mr Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief appeared to offer to double any Bitcoin payment sent to the address of his digital wallet “for the next hour”.
“I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19,” the tweet added, along with a Bitcoin link address.
As well as rapper Kanye West, former US President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, major companies Uber and Apple were targeted.
The accounts of Mike Bloomberg and Kim Kardashian were also hacked.
