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Scammers impersonating the President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance Inaugural Committee fraudulently stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, according to a new complaint filed by federal prosecutors.
The perpetrators used phony email addresses made to look like they belonged to the inaugural committee to ” trick or coerce victims into providing them money,” according to the civil complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Using email addresses that end in “@t47lnaugural.com” with a lowercase “l” as opposed to “@t47inaugural.com” with a lowercase “i,” the scammers duped victims into sending them more than 250,300 in USDT stablecoin, or about $250,300.
Court Watch first reported the filing Thursday.
The emails sent in December claimed to be from Steve Witkoff, then the co-chair of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee.
“The victim believed they were contributing a donation to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee through a false email address,” the filing reads.
Of the stolen funds, the U.S. government is seeking to permanently seize nearly 40,400 USDT “to punish and deter criminal activity by depriving criminals of property used in or acquired through illegal activities” and “to recover assets that may be used to compensate victims.”
About half of the USDT was recovered from a Binance account in the name of Ehiremen Aigbokhan, with an address in Nigeria, per the complaint.
Within 24 hours of the victim transferring the cryptocurrency, 215,000 in USDT was transferred “to numerous other cryptocurrency addresses,” according to the filing.
Binance provided records and voluntarily complied with a freeze request, according to the filing.