On July 3rd, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that a Nigerian scammer successfully defrauded a donor of $250,000 cryptocurrency by impersonating Steve Witkoff, co-chairperson of the Trump-Vance inaugural committee.
It is reported that the scammer sent an email on December 24, 2024, using a clever domain name deception trick - replacing the lowercase letter "i" in the official mailbox "@t47inaugural.com" with a lowercase letter "l" that looks almost identical to form "@t47lnaugural.com". The victim believed it and transferred 250,300 Ethereum-based USDT stablecoins to a crypto wallet controlled by the scammer on December 26.
The FBI successfully recovered 40,300 USDT with the assistance of Tether through blockchain transaction tracking, and the funds are currently under civil forfeiture proceedings to compensate victims. Experts warn that such scams targeting crypto donations are likely to increase as the political sphere becomes more accepting of cryptocurrencies, and that AI and deepfake technologies will further amplify the scale and sophistication of fraudulent activities.
US Department of Justice: Nigerian scammers impersonated "Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee" officials to defraud 250,000 US dollar cryptocurrency
2025-07-03 06:32:48
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