A Nigerian national has been accused of stealing over $250,000 worth of USDT (Tether stablecoin) from a cryptocurrency donor by impersonating a senior official from the “Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee” through a cleverly crafted phishing email. The FBI, with assistance from Tether, successfully traced and recovered over $40,000 of the stolen funds.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the scam occurred just before Christmas 2024. The scammer impersonated Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the inaugural committee, and used a deceptive email domain “@t47lnaugural.com,” where a lowercase “L” replaced the “I” in “@t47inaugural.com”—a subtle change nearly indistinguishable in certain fonts.
The victim failed to notice the discrepancy and on December 26 transferred $250,300 worth of Ethereum-based USDT to the scammer’s wallet. U.S. law enforcement is now pursuing a civil forfeiture process to recover the remaining stolen assets and return them to the victim.
Tether and FBI Collaborate to Freeze Part of the Funds
The stablecoin issuer Tether played a pivotal role in the case. The FBI tracked the movement of the funds using blockchain analytics, and Tether froze $40,300 of the illicit assets. This incident follows a growing pattern of cooperation by Tether in fraud investigations; previously, the company helped freeze $225 million in USDT linked to a large-scale “pig butchering” scam.
In this case, the fraudster not only exploited a visually similar email address but also capitalized on the current U.S. political climate and former President Trump’s public support for crypto donations, making the scam seem even more credible. KoinBX CEO Saravanan Pandian remarked that scammers are increasingly manipulating public trust and current events, a form of “opportunistic abuse” that heightens risks across the crypto ecosystem.
Chengyi Ong, APAC Policy Head at Chainalysis, also warned that political endorsements of crypto may enhance the persuasiveness of such scams. “These scams don’t necessarily rely on crypto rails,” she said. “Traditional fiat, bank transfers, and payment apps can also be exploited.”
AI and Deepfakes Are Raising the Stakes
Security experts widely agree that artificial intelligence and deepfake technology are amplifying the scale and sophistication of scams. Karan Pujara, founder of Scam Buzzer, noted that most scams still rely on traditional tactics like spoofed domains and phishing emails rather than advanced hacking. “It’s not the system that’s getting hacked—it’s human nature: fear, greed, and FOMO,” he said.
Pujara also mentioned that AI-driven bots can now monitor high-value wallets in real time and launch “address poisoning” attacks, making it even harder for users to stay safe.
In light of the growing wave of online and crypto-related fraud, experts are calling for a broader cross-industry defense mechanism involving law enforcement, regulators, tech firms, financial service providers, and blockchain companies. Only through information sharing and collaborative technology efforts can society effectively counter increasingly sophisticated scams in the future.