It’s not day-after-day you hear of cryptocurrency executives falling for crypto scams, however right here we’re. A complaint filed by the Division of Justice seems to disclose {that a} pair of MoonPay executives misplaced $250,000 price of Ethereum when donating to what they thought was President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as first reported by NOTUS.
Although the DOJ doesn’t explicitly establish the victims, the submitting incorporates screenshots of emails that embody 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, NOTUS discovered. The grievance additionally contains an Etherscan link to the transaction between the victims and the alleged scammer, which reveals a pockets deal with that has been recognized as belonging to Soto-Wright prior to now, NOTUS studies.
Within the grievance, the DOJ claims the victims obtained an e-mail from somebody pretending to be Steve Witkoff, the co-chair of Trump’s Inaugural Committee. Their e-mail was listed as “steve_witkoff@t47lnagural,” with an “L” as an alternative 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 e-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.