Key Insights
- A U.S. DOJ filing to seize $40,350 in USDT reveals a $250,000 crypto scam targeting MoonPay’s CEO and CFO.
- The victims sent funds to a scammer impersonating Trump ally Steve Witkoff using deceptive email addresses.
- Blockchain and email records link the scam to Nigerian national Ehiremen Aigbokhan, with funds traced to a MoonPay wallet.
WASHINGTON (MarketsXplora) A recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filing seeking the forfeiture of approximately $40,350 in USDT has inadvertently revealed the identities of two high-profile victims in a cryptocurrency scam—allegedly the CEO and CFO of digital payment firm MoonPay.
The court document, which aims to recover crypto assets frozen by Tether, outlines a case in which two individuals, identified only as “Ivan” and “Mouna,” were duped into sending $250,300 in USDT to a fraudster impersonating Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and former co-chair of President Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee.
But clues in the filing appear to link the victims to MoonPay: its CEO is Ivan Soto-Wright and its Chief Financial Officer is Mouna Ammari Siala. Further scrutiny revealed that one of the wallets involved in the transaction is flagged on Etherscan as a MoonPay wallet.
Records obtained from Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, indicate that the recipient wallet was registered to a man named Ehiremen Aigbokhan, a resident of Lagos, Nigeria. According to the DOJ, geolocation data from the email accounts used in the scam also trace the communications to Nigeria—not the United States.
Old Tricks, New Targets
The method used to carry out the scam was simple but effective. The scammer created deceptive email addresses that mimicked legitimate ones, using a lowercase “L” in place of a capital “I”—a tactic that is visually undetectable in many sans-serif fonts. The emails, appearing to be from addresses like steve_witkoff@t47lnaugural.com and financersvp@t47lnaugural.com, convinced the victims to authorize a transfer of funds.
The scam bears no signs of sophisticated blockchain exploitation, but instead relied on social engineering—an old-school method still proving effective in the crypto era.
Read also: U.S. Moves to Recover Over $40,000 in Crypto Stolen in Trump-Vance Email Scam
The case also brings renewed attention to a 2023 lawsuit in which Soto-Wright was accused of using the same wallet referenced in this DOJ filing to fund a personal account. MoonPay has yet to comment on the situation despite inquiries from MarketsXplora.
This incident surfaces at a critical time for MoonPay, which recently secured regulatory approval to operate in all 50 U.S. states after being granted a BitLicense by the New York State Department of Financial Services in June.
While the investigation into Aigbokhan is ongoing, the DOJ filing makes clear its intention to recover funds linked to what it classifies as an international fraud scheme. As crypto adoption widens among institutions and retail users alike, the case underscores the enduring vulnerabilities of human error—even among seasoned players in the industry.