Faux pope dupes thousands of followers on Twitter

On the heels of the Vatican's announcement presenting Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a fake Twitter account named after the new pontiff surfaced with more than 100,000 followers.

The now-suspended account posted bizarre messages, one stating that if Bergoglio would be elected as the new pope “kids are going to love me more than Santa Claus.”

According to a blog post by Sophos Labs, cyber scammers have leveraged breaking news on Twitter to lure unsuspecting followers to click on malicious links and spread attacks via the popular social network.

In February, a similar scenario played out when Pope Benedict XVI resigned. Fraudsters took advantage of the developing story by posting messages with the hashtag “pope” accompanied by links that did not lead to legitimate websites.