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Cryptocurrency scammers targeting top Trump supporters
With Donald Trump’s recent endorsement of cryptocurrencies, a wave of scammers have 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 allegedly accepted cryptocurrency donations and was also recently federally convicted. Both of these incidents led to a massive increase in tax donations to the Trump campaign.
Netcraft, a London-based crypto cybersecurity company, was monitoring numerous attacks regarding the Trump campaign, particularly following these two recent developments.
Netcraft uncovered fraudulent donation schemes posing as Trump campaign. Some of these schemes involved misspelled websites, while others involved numerous deceptive domains used in phishing and smishing activities.
Misspelled web domains
One of the main ways these scammers raise money is through misspelled websites. Some domains were registered the day after the campaign was announced, including “donalbjtrump[.]com and doonaldjtrump[.]com” for Netcraft. These websites feature really minor characters like a double “o” or a “b” instead of a “d” in the name Donald.
These websites have cryptocurrency donation centers where unwitting supporters can donate money.
Netcraft reports that the scammers running the domain are monitoring the current political proceedings. On May 31, when Trump’s guilty verdict was announced, this conman quickly adapted to mirror the Trump campaign’s “Never Give Up” narrative. This took advantage of the urgency of Trump supporters and their potential victims.
“With the Trump campaign raising more than $50 million in 24 hours, there is no telling how many may have been lured away by the criminals behind these scams,” the Netcraft website said.
Fake payment processes
Donation scams use various techniques to imitate legitimate crypto payment systems. The Trump campaign uses the Coinbase payments-based process, the design of which can be easily replicated.
Some phishing pages were created to impersonate Coingate and use cryptographic payment flows via Plisio and Oxapay. Netcraft also discovered donation scams that targeted traditional payment options, selectively redirecting users to the authentic campaign website only when they chose non-cryptocurrency payment methods.
Sophistication of the scam
Scammers are taking advantage of the popularity of the Trump campaign sending large numbers of emails and SMS in an attempt to trick 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 are improving their techniques by leveraging artificial intelligence to create more sophisticated and convincing scams.