Nigerian scammers impersonate Trump's team to defraud $250,000 in Crypto Assets.

According to Deep Tide TechFlow news on July 3, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that a Nigerian fraudster impersonated Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the Trump-Vance inauguration committee, successfully defrauding a donor of $250,000 in Crypto Assets.

It is reported that the scammers sent emails on December 24, 2024, using a clever domain spoofing technique—replacing the lowercase letter “i” in the official email “@t47inaugural.com” with the visually similar lowercase letter “l,” forming “@t47lnaugural.com.” The victim was deceived and transferred 250,300 Ethereum-based USDT stablecoins to a crypto wallet controlled by the scammers on December 26.

The FBI successfully recovered 40,300 USDT through blockchain transaction tracking, with the assistance of Tether, and these funds are currently undergoing civil forfeiture proceedings to compensate the victims. Experts warn that as the political sphere becomes more accepting of Crypto Assets, such scams targeting Crypto Assets donations may increase, and AI and deepfake technology will further amplify the scale and complexity of fraudulent activities.