A fresh wave of crypto scams targeting political figures has hit the UK, as the verified X account of Member of Parliament Lucy Powell was hijacked to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency. The hackers used her official platform to push a Solana-based token called “House of Commons Coin” (HOC), misleading followers into believing it was a legitimate, community-backed project.
The incident occurred on April 15, when Powell—who currently serves as Leader of the House of Commons—seemingly endorsed the token in a series of posts that directed users to buy in. The messages portrayed HOC as a decentralized, people-powered digital currency.
However, Powell’s team swiftly clarified to the BBC that her account had been compromised. According to a spokesperson, immediate steps were taken to secure the account and remove the misleading content.
Despite the impersonation attempt, the scam failed to attract much attention. Data from DEX Screener reveals that HOC only achieved a peak market cap of slightly over $24,000, with 736 transactions and a total trading volume of approximately $71,000. At the time of reporting, its market cap had plummeted to around $3,800.
Powell, who has no known ties to cryptocurrency, joins a growing list of political figures whose identities have been misused to pump and dump tokens.
Just last month, Ghana’s former president John Dramani Mahama had his X account hijacked for two days to shill a scam coin named “Solanafrica.” In a similar fashion, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to shut down its X account in January after it was seen promoting a token called “CUBA,” which briefly soared to a $30 million market cap before crashing.
In a more controversial twist, Argentina’s President Javier Milei came under fire in February after he shared a promotional post for a token called LIBRA. Although the president later distanced himself from the project and deleted the post, the token had already skyrocketed by over 3,000% before nosediving 90%. Investigations later indicated that insiders, including Kelsier Ventures, may have manipulated the launch, walking away with profits reportedly exceeding $110 million.
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