Last month, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump announced that his campaign would accept cryptocurrency donations. In the weeks that followed, cybercriminal detection firm Netcraft discovered dozens of fraudulent websites seeking to scam Trump supporters through these digital assets, according to a report shared exclusively with WIRED.
Netcraft found that in the days leading up to the announcement, scammers registered domains with common misspellings, hoping to recruit supporters intent on joining the site. donaldjtrump.com. A domain registered in donalbjtrump.com It was a near-perfect replica of the former president’s actual campaign website. And while the Trump campaign accepts donations through Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, some of the scam sites instead appear to be taking advantage of portals intended to look like Coingate, a payment processor. blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
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Trump as a pretext for a chain of cryptocurrency scams
“As a victim, the fact that the real campaign is turning to Coinbase payments instead of direct cryptocurrencies” would not be very obvious, says Rob Duncan, head of research at Netcraft. “The way it’s been spread is ‘Donald Trump accepts cryptocurrency donations,’ when in reality it’s a little more subtle.”
A second wave of fake websites appeared immediately after Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to pay pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. In the hours after his conviction, the campaign raised more than $34 million. Cybercriminals seemed to anticipate this interest, and were ready to cash in on the donations that poured into the Trump campaign following the verdict.
“Criminals like to take advantage of events like this, to base their scams on current events, issues that people are interested in, where they are more likely to click on the links,” Duncan points out. In the wake of the October 7 attacks and the subsequent conflict in Palestine, Duncan clarifies that Netcraft identified several donation scams, targeting people on both sides of the conflict.
“They are interested in getting cryptocurrencies from anyone. And they don’t care what political persuasion they are,” says Duncan.
And he adds that, after reviewing the blockchainnone of the scams appear to have been successful yet, but he suspects that is because they are relatively new and may not be active yet.
Trump campaign officials did not respond to our request for comment.
Cryptocurrencies are particularly useful to criminals primarily because they are unregulated and do not have the same restrictions as traditional financial institutions. According to the 2023 Internet Crime Report (Internet Crime Report 2023) from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI, cryptocurrency investment scams cost people about $3.94 billion. “Cryptocurrencies are obviously a pretty good 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 is gone.”
