TechFlow, July 3 — According to Decrypt, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed on Wednesday that a Nigerian fraudster successfully tricked a donor into sending $250,000 worth of cryptocurrency by impersonating Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee.
The scammer sent an email on December 24, 2024, using a sophisticated domain spoofing technique—replacing the lowercase letter "i" in the official email address "@t47inaugural.com" with a nearly identical-looking lowercase "l", creating "@t47lnaugural.com". Believing it to be legitimate, the victim transferred 250,300 USDT (Ethereum-based) to a crypto wallet controlled by the scammer on December 26.
The FBI, through blockchain transaction tracking and with assistance from Tether, successfully recovered 40,300 USDT. These funds are now undergoing civil forfeiture proceedings to compensate the victim. Experts warn that as political circles increasingly embrace cryptocurrency, scams targeting crypto donations may rise, and AI and deepfake technologies could further scale up and complicate such fraudulent activities.
