Even crypto execs fall for crypto scams

It’s not every day you hear of cryptocurrency executives falling for crypto scams, but here we are. A complaint filed by the Department of Justice appears to reveal that a pair of MoonPay executives lost $250,000 worth of Ethereum when donating to what they thought was President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as first reported by NOTUS.

Though the DOJ doesn’t explicitly identify the victims, the filing contains screenshots of emails that include their first names, Ivan and Mouna. These names line up with MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright and the company’s chief financial officer, Mouna Ammari Siala, NOTUS found. The complaint also includes an Etherscan link to the transaction between the victims and the alleged scammer, which shows a wallet address that has been identified as belonging to Soto-Wright in the past, NOTUS reports.

In the complaint, the DOJ claims the victims received an email from someone pretending to be Steve Witkoff, the co-chair of Trump’s Inaugural Committee. Their email was listed as “steve_witkoff@t47lnagural,” with an “L” instead of an “i” in “inaugural.”

The alleged scammer asked the victims to deposit their donation of $250,000 in Ethereum to a crypto wallet, which they did. “Hi Steve- our contribution of $250k was just processed. Here is the confirmation,” a December 26th, 2024 email from Mouna stated, alongside a link to the transaction. The DOJ claims the scammer, who was later linked to someone in Nigeria, attempted to launder the funds by sending them to “numerous” other crypto addresses.

The Verge reached out to MoonPay with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.