A civil forfeiture complaint has been filed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office to recover $40,300 in cryptocurrency stolen from a donor to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee. The scam initiated with an email on Christmas Eve, 2024, mimicking a legitimate campaign request from Steve Witkoff. The victim transferred 250,300 USDT.ETH to a wallet controlled by the scammer, traced to Nigeria. Recovery of $40,300 was successful through FBI's blockchain analysis, but complexity made retrieval difficult. The fraudulent email employed a classic spoofing technique common in Business Email Compromise schemes.
"All donors should double and triple check that they are sending cryptocurrency to their intended recipient. It can be extremely difficult for law enforcement to recoup lost funds due to the extremely complex nature of the blockchain."
"The fraudulent message appeared to come from a legitimate campaign address, but in reality, the sender had swapped the lowercase 'i' in the domain '@t47inaugural.com' with a lowercase 'l' - a subtle change nearly indistinguishable in many fonts."
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