The FBI is leading the investigation into a major cryptocurrency scam on social media that saw hackers take control of the Twitter accounts of celebrities and politicians.
Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were among the big names whose social media profiles were hacked as part of the bitcoin scam.
A federal inquiry has been launched into the hacking which is being led by the FBI, two sources familiar with the situation confirmed on Thursday.
Earlier the FBI had said: “We are aware of today’s security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals.
“The accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud.”
Official Twitter accounts for companies Apple and Uber, and billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, were also targeted in the scam.
They were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday evening and a scammers' message posted encouraging users to send 1,000 dollars (£794) to a Bitcoin address.
In return, users were promised that their money will be doubled and returned to them.
Twitter said it believed the incident was a "coordinated social engineering attack" that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools.
They were then used to take control of many high-profile and verified accounts and tweet from them, the social media firm said in statement.
The Bitcoin account mentioned in the fake tweets appeared to have been created on Wednesday.
Agencies contributed to this report
