Was Caeleb Dressel's Twitter handle hacked by crypto promoters?

Modified Dec 05, 2022 14:14 IST

Swimming - Olympics: Day 6 — Caeleb Dressel at Tokyo Olympics: Day 6

A recent onslaught of tweets from a cryptocurrency hype machine caught the attention of several fans who spotted something peculiar on their Twitter timelines.

They found promoters of cryptocurrencies have taken control of the Twitter account of another famous swimmer. This time it was none other than American swimming superstar, Caeleb Dressel.

A few weeks after Ryan Lochte's Twitter account started promoting cryptocurrency giveaways to his nearly one million followers, Caeleb Dressel's profile too became a target of the alarming trend. Previously, the two trained together at the University of Florida.

The new bio describes @caelebdressel as a "Crypto investor and Gem seeker," with more than 90,000 followers on Twitter. The seven-time Olympic gold medallist from Florida was replaced with a crypto dude wearing jorts on a balcony in the profile photo, but the handle has not been altered.

Caeleb Dressel's hacking was verified by his agent. The account started tweeting about cryptocurrency on Thursday, December 1.

Expand Tweet

Caeleb Dressel was not active on Twitter prior to the hacking of the account. He used to be active on the site, but he erased all of his tweets at some point before the cryptocurrency activities. On other social media sites in the past, such as his Instagram account in 2020, he has done the same thing.

Many of the famous swimming accounts, like the International Swimming League, Reece Whitley, Olympians from throughout the world, and even USA Swimming's official accounts, follow this one.

Ryan Lochte Case

Lochte appears to have partially reclaimed access to his account in the interim. It appears that his account had been compromised for a long time before being sold to a cryptocurrency marketer, who changed the handle to various versions of @cryptokingsfirst last month before changing it back to @ryanlochte lately.

Expand Tweet

Although it appears that Ryan Lochte has had his account restored, the tweets on cryptocurrency have not yet been taken down. His representative has not yet provided an explanation of whether the account was bought or stolen.

Far from being the only famous person whose Twitter accounts have been hacked by cryptocurrency fraudsters, Dressel and Lochte join a long list that also includes Wiz Khalifa, Mr. Beast from YouTube, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Kim Kardashian.

Other athletes, who suffered hacking, like Caeleb Dressel

Apart from Ryan Lochte and Caeleb Dressel, many more athletes have suffered from cyber-hacking in the past. However, we cannot describe each and every one. But here are a few names -

Kendyl Stewart

Her account gained over 70,000 followers after it started promoting cryptocurrencies and holding contests sometime in 2021, however it looks like Twitter terminated Kendyl Stewart's account somewhere in or around May.

Ricky Williams

Ricky Williams' hackers astonished the world with a number of commonplace, even boring words. He was arguably the cleanest, most courteous hacker we will ever face.

Donte Whitner

The Evil Hacker Man's preferred victim may be Donte Whitner.

After convincingly gaining control of Whitner's account in April 2013, shortly after defensive back Nnamdi Asomugha had been signed by the 49ers, Hacker Man tweeted, "F—k Nnamdi," according to Sean Newell of Deadspin.

Although the tweet was removed, the hacker remained.

Jabar Gaffney

Like Caeleb Dressel, Jabar Gaffney is also a new addition to this list. A bewildered throng of followers and the most recent victim of Twitter hacking stood in the middle of a torrential Twitter downpour.

Ray Allen

Oh, how do we hate those risqué hackers who essentially tarnish their reputations with 140 lewd characters?

Ray Allen saw quite the jaw-dropping tweet while simultaneously being grateful that there weren't any manhood pictures spread across the internet.

Edited by Ankush Das