In late December 2024, while America was hyped about Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, a Nigerian cybercriminal — now infamously dubbed the Lagos Yahoo Boy — was already plotting his move. His target? The Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, and the prize was a fat $250,000+ in crypto.
The scammer pulled a classic but deadly Business Email Compromise (BEC). Dude didn’t need guns or ski masks — he just registered a near-identical domain to the official inaugural committee’s email address. Instead of @t47inaugural.com, he used @t47lnaugural.com, swapping a lowercase L for an I so slick that even security-aware staff missed it.
He then fired off carefully crafted phishing emails to high-profile donors. One unlucky donor bit the bait, wiring 250,300 USDT.ETH (worth around $250,000) straight to wallets the fraudster controlled — thinking they were generously supporting Trump’s swearing-in party. Instead, they funded a Lagos scam empire.
But here’s the twist: crypto isn’t as untraceable as scammers think. The FBI jumped on the case fast, collaborating with Binance and Tether to track the stolen USDT through the blockchain. They identified several wallets used to launder the funds. By January 2025, they froze about $40,300 — but the rest had already vanished through crypto mixers.
Investigators soon linked the wallets to Ehiremen Aigbokhan, a Lagos-based Yahoo Boy known in cybercrime circles for pulling international BEC jobs. The FBI, in partnership with Nigeria’s EFCC, slapped him with an arrest warrant. According to court filings, he’d used the stolen funds to buy luxury items and launder cash into more wallets, hoping to stay steps ahead.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice filed civil forfeiture papers to claw back what’s left of the funds, and Binance cooperated by freezing suspicious accounts. FBI officials called the scheme a wake-up call for political committees worldwide, warning that phishing and BEC attacks don’t care about borders, presidents, or politics.
As memes of the Yahoo Boy flooded Instagram and TikTok — some hilariously captioned “From Lagos to the White House, donations delivered!” — cybersecurity experts stressed the seriousness of the hack. This wasn’t a victimless prank: it exposed the terrifying reality that even presidential campaigns can get pwned by email spoofing.
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