What’s the story
A hacker has been accused of using fake Donald Trump inauguration emails to defraud a cryptocurrency investor of over $250,000.
The scam involved an online fraudster impersonating a member of the US President’s 2025 inaugural committee.
According to federal officials, the fraudulent scheme was executed by sending emails purporting to be Steve Witkoff, then co-chair of the committee.
Scam details
Transferred funds were quickly spread across
The fraudulent emails were used to steal over $250,000 worth of USDT.ETH cryptocurrency.
After the victim transferred the funds, the cryptocurrency was quickly spread across “numerous other cryptocurrency addresses.”
This included a Binance account based in Nigeria linked to the name Ehiremen Aigbokhan.
Washington US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has warned donors to double-check their intended recipients when sending cryptocurrency due to blockchain’s complexity making it hard for law enforcement to recover lost funds.
Recovery efforts
Authorities have since frozen some of the stolen funds
In response to the scam, companies and cryptocurrencies involved, including Binance and Tether, froze accounts holding portions of the stolen funds.
Federal prosecutors are now seeking to seize some $40,000 in cryptocurrency spread across two untouched accounts.
The authorities have said that the money was obtained through wire fraud and money laundering.
Modus operandi
How the scam was executed
The scam, described as a “business email compromise scam,” involved the suspect manipulating email domain names by replacing an uppercase “I” with a lowercase “l” to resemble the official @t47lnaugural.com address.
Trump and Witkoff, who is now serving as a special Middle East envoy for the administration, are involved in several legitimate cryptocurrency ventures such as World Liberty Financial.