Proper-wing influencers are shilling an app that purportedly lets individuals earn crypto for reporting sightings of undocumented immigrants. ICERAID, a “GovFi protocol that delegates intelligence gathering duties to residents,” has not too long ago been promoted by the likes of conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, Proud Boy-turned-media persona Jacob Engels, and disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
“It’s like a citizen’s arrest, however with Wi-Fi,” Gaetz mentioned on a latest episode of his One America Information Community present. “Overlook driving Uber or DoorDash for additional change. Snap a pic, save the day, and stack some digital money when you’re doing it.”
ICERAID’s web site describes it as a “GovFi” — authorities finance, a time period coined by ICERAID founder Jason Meyers — protocol on Solana that “rewards residents for capturing and importing photographs of legal unlawful alien exercise.” (To be clear, ICERAID has no connection to the federal government.) And ICERAID isn’t simply soliciting photographs of suspected immigrants. “You may snap an image of somebody committing animal cruelty or murder, kidnapping, terrorism — you see somebody scraping a Tesla, that’s home terrorism,” Meyers mentioned on an April 4th livestream. ICERAID then “provides” this knowledge to regulation enforcement, in keeping with Meyers.
Regardless of these lofty ambitions, the ICERAID app (which is definitely an internet kind accessed through a crypto pockets) seems to be little greater than promotion of a not too long ago launched meme coin of the identical title — and a few early traders tried to get their a refund earlier than the coin even launched.
Meyers — who was accused of misappropriating funds at an earlier office — advised The Verge that ICERAID was launched in January. ICERAID announced a “bounty” for “suspicious unlawful alien exercise” in New York Metropolis the next month. However the coin ostensibly used to pay out rewards to individuals who ship in ideas through the app didn’t drop till April. To entry the reporting system, you must obtain Phantom, a crypto pockets that carries Solana-based tokens. ICERAID then gives a kind the place you may add photographs of alleged crimes-in-progress: unlawful immigration, drug trafficking, kidnapping, “theft/larson,” housebreaking, murder, terrorism, animal cruelty, and obstruction of justice. You’re requested whether or not you witnessed the exercise within the picture and acknowledge the placement or suspects, and that’s all.
In an interview with Gaetz, Meyers mentioned he’s “speaking to sure individuals at DHS, native regulation enforcement, DEA, and numerous different police departments” concerning the app. “We use blockchain to crowdsource regulation enforcement and legal and unlawful actions,” Meyers mentioned. “You add a photograph — which you must tackle location — and also you receives a commission for every picture you add.”
On ICERAID’s Telegram channel, Meyers clarified that the app provides “API entry” to regulation enforcement. “They finally resolve if they need to reply to the information,” Meyers mentioned in an emailed assertion to The Verge. “The aim is cooperation, not official partnerships.”
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) already has a tipline, as does US Citizenship and Immigration Providers, the company that oversees authorized immigration. ICE additionally has dozens of official partnerships with regulation enforcement companies throughout the nation.
Even when regulation enforcement companies are accessing ICERAID’s knowledge, it’s unlikely they’ll get something helpful out of it. ICERAID’s incident tracker solely reveals six entries as of April sixteenth, 5 of which have been rejected by ICERAID’s moderators. Per week earlier, the map confirmed 13 entries, simply three of which had been accepted. The three non-rejected entries had been a JD Vance meme, a photograph of Elon Musk handing a $1 million verify to a Republican voter in Wisconsin, and a photograph of Óscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador who was assassinated by a right-wing demise squad in 1980 over his opposition to the Salvadoran navy authorities. The Vance and Musk “sightings” have since disappeared, however the image of Romero stays on ICERAID’s map.
Meyers mentioned through electronic mail that ICERAID has acquired “a whole lot” of ideas, most of which had been “routinely eliminated as a result of they’re decided to be unreliable.” Meyers mentioned ICERAID makes use of AI to “increase the reliability of the proof by means of location verification, gender and age in addition to sentiment evaluation (completely happy, unhappy, offended, and so forth).” When requested for specifics on ICERAID’s AI, Meyers mentioned the AI “is educated” and “a really restricted quantity of proof makes it by means of validation.”
The app additionally claims to have a “sponsorship program” for “laborious working undocumented immigrant[s] with no legal historical past.” It claims to supply “a big reward” for individuals who pursue “a authorized standing in the US by means of self reporting” on the ICERAID app. Provided that it’s nearly impossible for most undocumented immigrants to use for citizenship or in any other case regulate their standing, it’s unclear what sort of “authorized standing” undocumented immigrants could be pursuing by means of ICERAID. Meyers’ reply was obscure. “We now have a community of service suppliers and consultants that take care of these points and are keen to offer assistance on a confidential foundation,” Meyers mentioned.
It’s additionally not clear whether or not anybody is earning money for the images they’re importing. Meyers stopped responding to The Verge’s emails when requested about earlier accusations that he’d misappropriated traders’ funds, and he didn’t reply to follow-up questions on whether or not and the way a lot individuals who use the app are getting paid. ICERAID’s massive pitch is that it pays individuals for photographs of “unlawful immigration” and different crimes. There’s no indication that really occurs.
And the way a lot cash is altering fingers by means of crypto gross sales? ICERAID had a token presale in February, throughout which it claims to have offered “65,007,513 ICERAID tokens.” The coin, currently valued at $0.002026 per token, has simply 82 holders as of April sixteenth.
Within the weeks main as much as the ICERAID token launch — which was pushed again a number of occasions — Meyers spent a substantial period of time within the ICERAID Telegram channel alternating between posting “lovely” photos of Homeland Safety secretary Kristi Noem and reassuring individuals who requested him to refund their presale tokens. Different moderators on the channel urged the skeptics to “belief the method.”
After one person requested Meyers for an official launch date, Meyers responded, “STOP TERRORIZING US OR YOU’LL GET DEPORTED!”
ICERAID isn’t Meyers’ first crypto undertaking. He’s additionally the founding father of AuditChain Labs, the mother or father firm that develops each ICERAID and Pacioli.ai, Meyer’s “RegFi” or “regulatory finance” firm. He additionally has an extended — and legally contentious — historical past within the monetary world. In 2014, the Monetary Trade Regulatory Authority (FINRA) completely banned Meyers from broker-dealer actions, according to the crypto web site The Rage. FINRA’s broker database claims that Meyers misappropriated “not less than $700,000 of funds raised from 19 traders in a sequence of personal choices of securities” between 2006 and 2011. In line with FINRA, Meyers took “important parts of the funds raised for his personal private use.” (He neither admitted nor denied the findings).
On Telegram, some early traders expressed frustration with what they described as a perpetually delayed launch of the coin. After one person requested Meyers for an official launch date, Meyers responded, “STOP TERRORIZING US OR YOU’LL GET DEPORTED!” Some members of the Telegram channel appeared to imagine that the coin was launching on March twenty fifth. Six days later, Meyers introduced that he was pushing the rollout once more on account of “important resistance” from the general public that required him to implement “all potential safety measures to safeguard our platform and group throughout what can solely be thought-about adversarial wartime situations.”
When requested what these threats had been, Meyers advised The Verge that “further precautions had been taken in anticipation of threats, which haven’t materialized,” however he didn’t make clear what the threats had been. “There was by no means a proper launch date,” Meyers mentioned through electronic mail.
“We’re all able to launch,” Meyers wrote in ICERAID’s Telegram channel three days later, on April third. “The query is will we need to launch right this moment with market situations the best way they’re.” The Dow dropped 2,200 factors in a single day in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. ICERAID launched the next day.
“We’re actually making an attempt to have a completely easy launch on this, as a result of we’re going to get such excessive visibility with the US authorities entities and different regulation enforcement teams,” Thomas Herlihy, a crypto persona whose present DYOR Reside! hosted the ICERAID launch announcement, mentioned in the course of the livestream. (Herlihy additionally goes by “Hanging Balls.”) “We don’t need it to be seen as a typical crypto undertaking that super-pumps after which doesn’t pump anymore, after which individuals take their cash and go away.”
By way of electronic mail, Meyers emphasised (underlining and bolding the phrase “emphasised”) that “the purpose of the app is NOT to ‘pump’ the coin. The purpose of the app is to experiment, show and talk the technical, financial, and social principals of ‘GovFi,’ which is able to take time.” He was far much less restrained within the Telegram channel, at one level claiming the coin would go to $3 billion. Nonetheless, Meyers advised potential traders that ICERAID was greater than a memecoin. “We’re going to make an trustworthy lady out of Solana,” Meyers wrote on Telegram.
Even when ICERAID finally ends up being little greater than a pump-and-dump scheme, a few of its latest boosters have an outsized quantity of energy in Washington. On ICERAID’s Telegram account, Meyers bragged about assembly with Tether founder Brock Pierce. Pierce, a child-star-turned-crypto-mogul, hosted a DOGE appreciation social gathering at his Capitol Hill rental that coincided with the top of the Conservative Political Motion Convention.
Loomer — who promoted the undertaking to her 1.6 million followers on X — has a lot sway over Trump that the president reportedly fired several National Security Council staffers after she steered they had been insufficiently loyal.
However ICERAID’s clunky interface and the obvious dearth of ideas it’s acquired thus far, the advertising and marketing push round it signifies a broader right-wing need to show on a regular basis individuals into immigrant-hunting vigilantes. In January, a Mississippi state consultant introduced a bill that might have awarded licensed bounty hunters with $1,000 for apprehending immigrants who had been within the state with out authorization. An identical invoice was launched within the Missouri state Senate. That laws would have created a fund for bounty hunters and others who turned over info ensuing within the arrest of undocumented immigrants. Neither invoice turned a regulation.
David Gregory, the Missouri state senator who sponsored the invoice, disagreed with reporters’ characterization of the invoice. “I’m listening to issues like, ‘oh, this locations a bounty on individuals.’ No, it doesn’t,” he advised CNN. “Simply because we’re dispatching bounty hunters after a warrant has been issued shouldn’t be a bounty. It’s truly a reward system by means of a hotline.”
ICERAID, however, has no drawback with the phrase “bounty.” However the monetary incentives it claims to supply are depending on a meme coin that, as of this writing, isn’t value a lot in any respect.