Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev X account hijack — fake $VLAD memecoin

Timeline: On July 23, 2026, approximately 46 minutes before a fraudulent post appeared on X, attacker EOA 0xD70627FD9eE5b70906620a6f2001BA74457b438D deployed the VLAD token (0x92D176ccBeEffeCd8089e841D09ea17b6C22D969) on Robinhood Chain via PonsLaunchFactory. The contract embedded Vlad Tenev's X handle (https://x.com/vladtenev) as the social link, evidencing premeditated impersonation. At approximately 17:24 UTC, the attacker posted from Vlad Tenev's compromised verified X account, announcing 'Vladhood ($VLAD)' as the 'official mascot of Robinhood Chain' and falsely claiming an upcoming in-app listing. The post drew approximately 175,000 views in 20 minutes. VLAD trading volume surged past $22M across ~85,000 swaps on Uniswap V3. The attacker collected PonsLaunchFactory trading fees 6 times, extracting ~31.6 ETH directly plus retaining ~72M VLAD (7% of supply). Analyst estimates place total attacker profit at ~$1.2–1.3M (~650 ETH), though figures vary across sources. Robinhood Communications confirmed the account compromise, coordinated with X to remove the post and restore access. Tenev regained control of his account on July 24 and posted a clarification. The incident echoed a July 12, 2026 X account hijack of SpaceX/Starlink accounts used in a similar memecoin scam (~$2M). No buyer recovery mechanism was announced.