TV star Dean Norris had his X account hijacked to promote a memecoin that used his likeness as part of a pump and dump scheme.
In a Jan. 26 video posted to his X account, Norris, best known for his role as Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad, said he was hacked, and the memecoin, DEAN, was a “complete, fake scam” and blasted Reddit users who he claimed “called me all sorts of shit for something I didn’t do. Go fuck yourselves.”
The post promoting the token has been taken down, but users took screenshots of the original and subsequent posts from the hackers, which included an apparent doctored photo of Norris holding a piece of paper with the ticker DEAN and its launch date.
One X post from the hackers shared a video of Norris saying, “Hey, it’s me, Dean, and on January 25th, I’m declaring it’s real,” made to appear that he’s attesting to the coin’s legitimacy.
Some users on Reddit have speculated that the video could have been an artificial intelligence-created deepfake or a paid video taken out of context. Norris is active on Cameo, a platform where users can pay celebrities for customized videos.
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According to blockchain data tracker DexScreener, DEAN spiked to a market cap of around $8.43 million on Jan. 25 but has now collapsed to under $60,000. The memecoin’s price has also crashed by over 96%.
In a follow-up statement, Norris said he doesn’t have a Telegram account and rarely uses X. “I didn’t know I was hacked until I started getting texts from friends saying it’s out there.”
This is the second time Norris’s account was hacked to promote a cryptocurrency scheme.
In November, onchain sleuth ZachXBT said a project associated with a former pro Fortnite player was connected to multiple account takeovers, including McDonald’s, Usher and Dean Norris.
It comes after President Donald Trump’s surprise memecoin launch on Jan. 18 sparked a trading frenzy, sending the memecoin to a market capitalization of nearly $9 billion a few hours after its launch.
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