WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit and is seeking the arrest of a Nigerian national, Ehiremen Aigbokhan, over an elaborate cryptocurrency scam that defrauded a donor of more than ₦460 million meant for the 2025 Trump-Vance presidential inauguration.
According to court documents obtained by Peoples Gazette, Aigbokhan and his accomplices orchestrated a sophisticated Business Email Compromise (BEC) scheme to impersonate officials from the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee and solicit bogus donations in cryptocurrency.
In the weeks leading up to the scheduled inauguration on January 20, 2025, the fraudsters set up fake email addresses closely resembling official accounts used by the committee. One such email – @t47lnaugural.com – was designed to mirror the legitimate @t47inaugural.com address used by co-chair Steve Witkoff.
On December 26, 2024, one victim, misled by the fraudulent email, transferred 250,300 USDT.ETH, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar, to the scammers’ wallet. At the current black market exchange rate, this sum amounts to over ₦400 million.
Shortly after the transfer, the perpetrators rapidly disbursed 215,000 USDT.ETH to various crypto wallets in an attempt to conceal the source of the funds. However, the FBI quickly intervened and requested crypto firm Tether to freeze the involved accounts. Tether complied and froze the wallets on December 31, 2024.
The agency traced the transactions and email activity back to Lagos, Nigeria. Further investigation revealed that some of the stolen funds had been transferred to a Binance.com account registered to Mr Aigbokhan. Notably, the account had no prior transactions until the inflow from the scam wallet, suggesting it was created specifically for the operation.
Digital forensics also tied the fraudulent email servers and crypto transactions to IP addresses located in Lagos, further strengthening the case against Aigbokhan.
So far, the FBI has recovered 20,017 USDT.ETH from Mr Aigbokhan’s wallet and another 20,336 USDT.ETH from a second wallet linked to the scheme, a combined value of over ₦60 million.
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Rick Blaylock Jr., has asked the court to grant forfeiture of the seized assets, even as efforts to bring Aigbokhan to justice continue.
