Senator Cynthia Lummis' verified X account was briefly hijacked to promote a fake Solana meme token, $USA Token, with the posts removed after about five minutes. The scam linked to pump.fun, a site that allows quick minting of Solana meme coins, and garnered roughly 5,600 views and 37 replies before deletion. No funds have been tied to the tokens so far, contrasting with a recent Robinhood CEO account takeover that netted about $1.2 million. The incident highlights an ongoing pattern of verified-account crypto scams and arrives as Lummis' CLARITY Act remains stalled in the Senate.
Short-Lived Scam: Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ Verified X Account Hijacked to Promote Fake Solana Token
Photo by BeInCrypto
Hackers briefly seized control of Senator Cynthia Lummis' verified X account on Wednesday and used it to promote a counterfeit Solana meme token called $USA Token. The fraudulent posts were removed roughly five minutes after they appeared, but not before attracting attention and engagement.
What happened: The message claimed the token was "officially created by our team," tagged Solana and displayed an American flag image. It linked to pump.fun, a service that enables rapid minting of Solana meme coins. Screenshots archived by Bitcoin Archive show the post reached about 5,600 views and 37 replies before disappearing; several near-identical posts followed in quick succession, each pointing to a different token page.
Why Verified Political Accounts Are Valuable Targets
Verified accounts for public officials have large, trusting audiences and rarely post promotional material. That makes the first few minutes after a fraudulent post particularly consequential: followers may act quickly before a scam is reported or removed. In this case, other crypto users flagged the posts within minutes and warned followers not to buy the tokens. At the time of publication, Lummis' office had not issued a confirmation of the breach.
Solana (SOL) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Wider Pattern and Recent Precedents
The incident mirrors a recurring playbook: attackers compromise a verified account, promote a freshly minted token, then delete the evidence before the owner regains control. Six days earlier, the verified X account of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was taken over after attackers socially engineered X support, promoting a token called Vladhood and extracting roughly $1.2 million (about 650 ETH). Earlier in July, SpaceX and Starlink accounts were used to promote a rug pull named SCATMAN, netting about $125,000.
In April, X began locking first-time crypto posts to slow such scams, but account-takeover attacks have continued despite the measure.
Market Context
At the time of reporting, SOL traded around $73, down about 1% over 24 hours and roughly 60% below its price a year earlier. The $USA Token pushed in the hijacked posts showed no meaningful liquidity and, so far, no proceeds have been tied to the scam tokens.
Political Timing
The hijacking comes as Lummis — a leading advocate of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, which proposes splitting crypto oversight between two federal regulators — saw her bill stall before the Senate recess. While the token itself appears to have yielded no profit, how the account was accessed could become politically and legally significant.
Takeaway: The incident reinforces the persistent threat of account-takeover scams on social platforms and underscores vulnerabilities that can have both financial and reputational consequences for public figures.
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