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Cryptocurrency Scammers Target Trump’s MAGA Supporters
Last month, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump announced that his campaign would accept cryptocurrency donations. In the following weeks, cybercrime detection firm Netcraft found dozens of scam websites are trying to target Trump supporters and rob them of their cryptocurrencies, according to a report shared exclusively with WIRED.
Netcraft found that in the days leading up to the announcement, scammers registered domains with common spelling errors, hoping to catch supporters intending to access donaldjtrump.com. A domain registered at donalbjtrump.com was a near-perfect replica of the current Trump campaign website. And while the Trump campaign accepts donations through Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, some of the scam websites instead appear to be using portals meant to resemble Coingate, a blockchain and cryptocurrency payment processor.
“As a victim, the fact that the real campaign uses Coinbase payments rather than direct cryptocurrencies” wouldn’t be very obvious, says Rob Duncan, head of research at Netcraft. “The way it’s been advertised is ‘Donald Trump accepts cryptocurrency donations,’ when in reality it’s a little more subtle.”
A second wave of fake websites appeared soon after Trump’s May 30 felony conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels. In the hours following her conviction, the campaign raised more than $34 million in donations. Cybercriminals appeared to anticipate this interest and were poised to capitalize on donations pouring into Trump’s campaign following the verdict.
“Criminals like to use events like this, to base their scams on current events, things that people are interested in, where people are more likely to click on links,” Duncan says. In the wake of the October 7 attacks and subsequent conflict in Palestine, Duncan says Netcraft identified several donation scams, targeting people on both sides of the conflict.
“They are interested in getting cryptocurrency from anyone. And they don’t care what political beliefs they might have,” Duncan says.
Duncan adds that when checking the blockchain, none of the scams appear to be successful yet, but he suspects this may be because they are relatively new and may not be active yet.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Cryptocurrencies can be particularly useful for criminals because they are largely unregulated and do not have the same constraints as traditional financial institutions. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation 2023 Internet Crime Report, cryptocurrency investment scams cost people an estimated $3.94 billion. “Cryptocurrencies are obviously a great mechanism for criminals to use,” Duncan says. “There is no way to reverse the payments; once the money is in the criminal’s wallet, it’s gone.”
Trump’s recent support for cryptocurrencies represents an about-face on the part of his presidency. In 2019, Trump said yes “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies in a series of posts on X, then on Twitter. “We only have one real currency in the United States… It’s called the United States dollar!” she posted at the time.