Hackers of McDonald’s Instagram earned $700,000 promoting Grimace meme token

Fraudsters who hacked the official McDonald’s Instagram profile on August 21 earned over $700,000 in Solana after using the fast-food chain’s social media page to promote a meme token called ‘Grimace’.

According to screenshots shared on X, McDonald’s Instagram page posted a series of posts promoting the fake token themed around the purple mascot of the fast-food chain, Grimace. Several posts described the fake meme token as ‘McDonald’s experiment on Solana’, which was shared among 5.1 million followers worldwide.

According to data from the blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps, the hacker first used the Solana meme token deployer pump.fun to grab 75% of the total circulating supply of the Grimace token before distributing it among approximately one hundred different wallets.

After the posts from the official McDonald’s account, the value of the meme token rose from a market capitalization of a few thousand dollars to as much as $25 million within 30 minutes, according to DexScreener data. The token price then fell as the hacker began selling, and within 40 minutes, the token’s value dropped to around $650,000. Bubblemaps reported that the hackers made off with a total profit of approximately $700,000 in Solana.

After the attack, the hacker also edited the biography section of McDonald’s page to boast about their exploits, also sharing that they earned a total of $700,000.

– Sorry mah n-gga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana – wrote the hacker.

Posts promoting the meme token have now been removed and returned to normal.

McDonald’s stated in a statement to the New York Post that it is aware of an ‘isolated incident’ that affected its social media accounts on August 21.

– We resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted at that time – said McDonald’s.