PTI Chairman Imran Khan's Instagram account was briefly hacked on Monday, the party's social media head has confirmed.

Dr Arslan Khalid told Dawn.com that the account was hacked, however, adding that it was recovered soon with the help of Meta — Facebook and Instagram's parent company.

He said he himself monitored Imran's account, which has 7.4 million followers, adding that the hackers had shared a cryptocurrency link to the account.

Khalid said the hackers also shared a screenshot of a tweet from Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.

The flamboyant billionaire is often impersonated by scammers and hackers looking to cheat people. In May 2021, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that fake promised giveaways by celebrities such as Musk were being used by scammers to cash in on interest in cryptocurrencies.

In one type of scam, people are told that if they give a certain amount of cryptocurrency to a "celebrity" they will get more back.

"People have reported sending more than $2 million in cryptocurrency to Elon Musk impersonators over just the past six months," the FTC had said.

Additional input from Reuters.