In December 2024, a group of Americans fell victim to a large-scale cryptocurrency scam. An individual from Nigeria, or a group posing as co-chair of Donald Trump’s Inaugural Committee and Vice President Jay Vance, managed to illegally obtain 250,300 USDT in cryptocurrency.
This is reported by Finway
Scamming Methods: Forged Emails and Character Substitution
According to law enforcement, the scammers sent emails on behalf of Steve Witkoff from an address where they replaced one letter — changing “i” to “l” — to mislead their victims. These messages indicated that Trump needed financial support, urging concerned individuals to transfer funds to a crypto wallet with the identifier “58c52”.
One victim, influenced by the convincing email, transferred 250,300 USDT to the specified account via the Ethereum network. Immediately afterward, the scammers laundered the funds by distributing them among various crypto wallets to complicate the tracking of transactions.
Tracking the Funds and Law Enforcement Response
Thanks to cooperation with Tether, the issuer of USDT, part of the stolen amount — 40,300 USDT — was tracked and frozen. Currently, the District of Columbia’s prosecutor is seeking a court order to return these assets to the affected party.
“All donors should double and triple-check that they are sending cryptocurrency to the intended recipient. It can be extremely difficult for law enforcement to recover lost funds due to the highly complex nature of blockchain,” said Prosecutor Janine Pirro.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident. It is worth noting that this is not the first instance of such crimes: earlier reports indicated the theft of over $900,000 by citizens of North Korea posing as IT specialists.