On May 11, 2026, the verified X account of Keith Gill, famously known as Roaring Kitty, was compromised. Hackers exploited the account to promote a Solana-based meme coin called Red Kitten Crew (RKC), leading to a significant financial drain for traders. The attackers quickly orchestrated a pump-and-dump scheme that netted them over $2.8 million, leaving unsuspecting investors with heavy losses.
The incident began when two posts were published from Gill’s account, which had been inactive for 16 months. The first post included a Pump.fun contract address for RKC, while the second featured a cartoon clip with a phrase related to the coin. These posts were deleted within an hour, but not before causing a surge in the coin’s market cap, which briefly reached between $11 million and $12 million.
Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain revealed that the developer behind the scam used 10 wallets to acquire nearly 40% of the total RKC supply, spending only about $1,950. After the price spiked, the developer sold all tokens for roughly $495,000, plus an additional $118,000 in creator fees from Pump.fun. In total, over 80 wallets were involved in extracting $2.86 million during the brief rally.
This event follows a pattern of high-profile X account hijackings in the crypto space. Earlier in 2025, Pump.fun’s own account was hacked to promote a fake governance token, and Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu’s account was similarly compromised in December 2024 to shill a Solana meme coin. The repeated nature of these attacks highlights ongoing security vulnerabilities on social media platforms.
Interestingly, GameStop shares saw a temporary 13% increase during the RKC frenzy but quickly erased all gains. Keith Gill has not commented on the hack, and there is no evidence that he endorses any meme coins. The Roaring Kitty persona rose to fame in 2021 for sparking a massive short squeeze on GameStop stock through Reddit posts, making this incident particularly ironic given his history of retail investor advocacy.