Last week, Metallica made a big announcement. The long-running stadium-metal heroes dropped their new single “Lux Æterna,” and they also announced plans for a new album and a stadium tour that’ll run for the next two years. Metallica did not, however, announce any kind of cryptocurrency endeavor. Still, some scammers are out there, claiming to be associated with the band and accepting vast sums of money from gullible fans. Last night, the band issued a statement that disavows those scams and seeks to protect fans.

Metallica’s statement comes in the wake of a story about one fan who reportedly paid tens of thousands to a fake Metallica YouTube account. According to KMAN, a Manhattan man filed a police report last week, claiming that he sent $25,500 in Bitcoin to “an unknown suspect.” It’s not entirely clear what this man thought he was buying.

In their statement, Metallica warn fans not to trust anything that doesn’t come from an official Metallica channel:

In the wake of last week’s exciting news of our new song, new album, and new tour, unfortunately the ugly side of social media made an appearance. Many of you have let us know about YouTube channels and live streams, as well as websites, claiming to offer Metallica Crypto giveaways in conjunction with last week’s announcement.

Let’s be as clear as possible. These are scams. They’re being streamed on fake YouTube channels posing to be ours and all pointing to websites that we do not run. Please remember — all of our official social media channels are verified. Always look for official verification before believing something wild and crazy to be true. We thank all of you who have been vigilant in reporting these live streams to YouTube and to us… please don’t let up!

As a reminder, these are the official Metallica channels:

Website: metallica.com, livemetallica.com
Instagram: @metallica
YouTube: @metallica
Facebook: @metallica
TikTok: @metallica
Twitter: @metallica

Be familiar with the symbols that indicate an official channel and report anything that is a scam!