- Someone with the Twitter handle @warrenbuffet99 has created an account claiming to be Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, and is raking in followers.
- The account was created in December 2016 and sent at least 11 tweets on Monday morning, adding thousands of followers.
- The real @WarrenBuffett account is verified and spells his last name correctly.
An unverified Twitter account with the handle @warrenbuffet99 has amassed a cult following on the social-media platform.
The account, which was started in December 2016 but doesn't appear to have tweeted until Saturday, had over 41,000 followers as of Monday morning.
At least three things should have set off alarm bells for anyone who stumbled upon this account:
- It's unverified (the real @WarrenBuffett account is).
- The tweets hardly have anything to do with Berkshire Hathaway, the company Buffett runs, or financial markets or investing - things that most people look to Warren Buffett for advice on.
- The account spells Buffett with one 't' instead of two.
The tweets were all motivational quotes and have been retweed several thousand times, like this one on how to be cool:
Twitter/@warrenbuffet99
How to be healthy:
And how to be smart:
Twitter/@warrenbuffet99
It's against Twitter's terms of service to create an account impersonating another person.