With Donald Trump’s recent endorsement of crypto, a wave of fraudsters has targeted his loyal supporters.
These scammers, using fake crypto websites and misleading donation centers, are exploiting the loyal trust and interest of Trump’s base.
Trump recently announced that his campaign would accept crypto donations and was also recently federally convicted. Both these incidents led to a massive surge in fiscal donations to the Trump campaign.
Netcraft, a London-based crypto cybersecurity company, has been monitoring several attacks surrounding the Trump campaign, particularly following these two recent developments.
Netcraft discovered fraudulent donation schemes posing as the Trump campaign. Some of these schemes involved misspelled websites, while others involved numerous deceitful domains used in phishing and smishing efforts.
Misspelled web domains
One of the main ways these scammers garner funds is through slightly misspelled websites. Some domains were registered the day following the campaign announcement, including “donalbjtrump[.]com and doonaldjtrump[.]com” per Netcraft. These websites feature really minor types like a double “o” or a “b” instead of a “d” in the name Donald.
These websites feature crypto donation centers where unknowing supporters can give money.
Netcraft reports that the scammers operating the domain are monitoring current political procedures. On May 31st, when Trump’s guilty verdict was announced, this scammer adjusted quickly to mirror the “Never Surrender” narrative of the Trump campaign. This took advantage of the urgency from Trump supporters and their potential victims.
“With the Trump campaign collecting more than $50M in 24 hours, there’s no telling how much might have been lured away by the criminals behind these scams,” the Netcraft website stated.
Fake payment processes
Donation scams use various techniques to mimic legitimate crypto payment systems. The Trump campaign utilizes the Coinbase payments-based process, whose design can be easily replicated.
Some phishing pages were created to impersonate Coingate and use crypto payment flows through Plisio and Oxapay. Netcraft also found donation scams targeting traditional payment options, selectively redirecting users to the genuine campaign website only when choosing non-cryptocurrency payment methods.
Scam sophistication
Scammers are exploiting the popularity of Trump’s campaign by sending out a large number of emails and texts in an attempt to deceive potential donors into visiting fake websites.
Netcraft communicated with a scammer posing as the “Trump National Committee” and obtained valuable threat intelligence, including details of bank accounts used for money laundering, payment app information, email addresses, and more.
This interaction revealed that criminals advance their techniques by leveraging AI to create more sophisticated and convincing scams.