In a surprising move last month, former President Donald Trump, now a convicted felon, revealed that his campaign would accept cryptocurrency donations. However, this announcement was quickly followed by a rise in scam websites aiming to exploit Trump supporters and their digital assets. Cybercrime detection firm Netcraft discovered these fraudulent sites, which were created using domains with common misspellings of donaldjtrump.com, in an attempt to trick followers.
One such domain, donalbjtrump.com, was an almost exact replica of the actual Trump campaign website. While the legitimate campaign accepts donations through Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, these scam sites appeared to be using portals designed to look like Coingate, a blockchain and cryptocurrency payment processor. Rob Duncan, head of research at Netcraft, noted that the subtleties between the campaign's actual use of Coinbase payments and Coingate's impersonation of scam sites may not be obvious to potential victims.
After Trump's May 30 felony conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to pay Stormy Daniels, the campaign raised more than $34 million in donations. Cybercriminals seemed to anticipate this influx of interest and were ready to take advantage of the surge in donations. Duncan explained that criminals often use current events to base their scams on, as people are more likely to click on related links.
Despite the recent conflict in Palestine, Netcraft identified several donation scams targeting people on both sides of the issue. Duncan noted that these criminals are interested in acquiring cryptocurrency from anyone, regardless of their political beliefs. While none of the scams seem to be successful yet, Duncan suspects this could be due to their recent creation and potential inactivity.
Cryptocurrencies are particularly attractive to criminals because of their lack of regulation and the limitations that traditional financial institutions face. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2023 Internet Crime Report stated that crypto investment scams cost people approximately $3.94 billion. Duncan emphasized the appeal of crypto to criminals, as there is no way to reverse payments once the money is in the criminal's wallet.
Interestingly, Trump's recent endorsement of crypto is a stark contrast to his presidency. In 2019, he expressed his disapproval of cryptocurrencies, stating that the only real currency in the US is the US dollar.
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