It’s not each day you hear of cryptocurrency executives falling for crypto scams, however right here we’re. A grievance filed by the Division of Justice seems to disclose {that a} pair of MoonPay executives misplaced $250,000 value of Ethereum when donating to what they thought was President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as first reported by Identified.
Although the DOJ doesn’t explicitly determine the victims, the submitting incorporates screenshots of emails that embrace their first names, Ivan and Mouna. These names line up with MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright and the corporate’s chief monetary officer, Mouna Ammari Siala, Identified discovered. The grievance additionally contains an Etherscan hyperlink to the transaction between the victims and the alleged scammer, which reveals a pockets tackle that has been recognized as belonging to Soto-Wright up to now, Identified reviews.
Within the grievance, the DOJ claims the victims acquired an electronic mail from somebody pretending to be Steve Witkoff, the co-chair of Trump’s Inaugural Committee. Their electronic mail was listed as “steve_witkoff@t47lnagural,” with an “L” as a substitute of an “i” in “inaugural.”
The alleged scammer requested the victims to deposit their donation of $250,000 in Ethereum to a crypto pockets, which they did. “Hello Steve- our contribution of $250k was simply processed. Right here is the affirmation,” a December twenty sixth, 2024 electronic mail from Mouna acknowledged, alongside a hyperlink to the transaction. The DOJ claims the scammer, who was later linked to somebody in Nigeria, tried to launder the funds by sending them to “quite a few” different crypto addresses.
The Verge reached out to MoonPay with a request for remark however didn’t instantly hear again.
