A group of Nigerian scammers allegedly impersonated the Inaugural Committee for United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency through a sophisticated email phishing scheme.
According to a civil complaint filed by federal prosecutors on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the suspects created deceptive email addresses mimicking official accounts to “trick or coerce victims into providing them money.”
The fraudulent emails used addresses ending in “@t47lnaugural.com,” where a lowercase “l” replaced the letter “i” in “inaugural,” giving the appearance of legitimacy and deceiving victims into thinking they were communicating with the official 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.
According to prosecutors, these emails were sent in December and falsely claimed to originate from Steve Witkoff, who was acting as co-chair of the inaugural committee at the time. The scam resulted in the transfer of approximately 250,300 USDT (a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin), equating to around $250,300 in value.
Court Watch first reported the details of the filing on Thursday.
The complaint also notes that roughly half of the stolen cryptocurrency was traced to a Binance exchange account registered under the name Ehiremen Aigbokhan, with an address listed in Nigeria. Within 24 hours of the fraudulent transfer, about 215,000 USDT had been distributed across numerous other cryptocurrency addresses in an apparent attempt to obscure the funds’ trail.
Federal authorities are now seeking the permanent forfeiture of nearly 40,400 USDT from the stolen amount, with the goal of “punish[ing] and deter[ring] 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,” the filing states.
