U.S. prosecutors recently announced a case in which a scammer in Nigeria impersonated a senior official of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee and defrauded a donor of $250,000 in cryptocurrency by exploiting a subtle spelling error.
Sophisticated scam tactics
On December 24, 2024, the scammer impersonated Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, sending an email to the victim from the address "@t47lnaugural.com." This address replaced the lowercase "i" in the legitimate domain "@t47inaugural.com" with an uppercase "l," appearing almost identical depending on the font.
Believing the message was genuine, the victim transferred 250,300 USDT.ETH, a dollar-pegged stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain, to a cryptocurrency wallet controlled by the scammer on December 26.
The FBI successfully traced the blockchain transactions and recovered 40,300 USDT.ETH of the stolen funds. This money is currently undergoing civil forfeiture proceedings to compensate the victim. Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, assisted authorities in freezing the stolen cryptocurrency, similar to their role in another case last month, when the company helped seize $225 million USDT related to large-scale "pig butchering" investment scams.
The threat of scams and the role of AI
Saravanan Pandian, CEO and founder of the crypto exchange KoinBX, described this incident as "a completely new minefield," where bad actors exploit political figures and real-life events to defraud victims. He added that this is "a pure opportunistic exploitation of public trust, political sentiment, and the irreversible nature of crypto all at once."
This scam exploited the fact that the authorities $TRUMP accepted donations in cryptocurrency. Chengyi Ong, Head of APAC Policy at Chainalysis, warned that AI and deepfake technology will "amplify the scale and sophistication of fraudulent activities," and effective prevention will require an "interdisciplinary approach" among law enforcement agencies, regulators, tech companies, financial institutions, and the crypto industry.
Karan Pujara, founder of the security analytics company Scam Buzzer, noted that this incident exposes the basic security vulnerabilities of cryptocurrency donors. He stated, "Since the early days of the Internet, phishing has remained the oldest trick in the book, and users still fall for it, whether in crypto, online shopping, or banking." Pujara emphasized that scammers often deceive human psychology by triggering fear, greed, and FOMO, rather than attacking the system.
"With AI, the speed, execution capability, and scale to replicate crypto scams will increase exponentially," he said, noting that automated bots can monitor wallets with large balances and execute transactions to compromised addresses instantly. While many blame crypto itself, Pujara points out that outdated tools, such as suspicious links and spoofed domains, remain the backbone of most scams.