The Federal Bureau of Investigation has filed a civil forfeiture complaint seeking to seize assets belonging to Lagos-based fraudster Ehiremen Aigbokhan for stealing over ₦460 million intended for U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. The FBI is also pursuing an arrest warrant against Aigbokhan in connection with a cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering operation that targeted a donor aiming to contribute to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee.
According to legal documents obtained by Peoples Gazette, Aigbokhan and his associates employed a Business Email Compromise (BEC) scheme to defraud victims by redirecting funds to cryptocurrency wallets under their control. In the weeks before the January 20, 2025 inauguration, fraudsters created deceptive email addresses resembling official committee emails and sent donation requests to potential contributors.
On December 26, 2024, one of the fake emails—using the domain @t47lnaugural.com—was sent to a victim to impersonate the legitimate @t47inaugural.com used by Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee. The victim, believing the request to be authentic, sent 250,300 USDT.ETH to the scammers, a sum estimated to exceed ₦400 million at current parallel market rates.
Shortly after receiving the funds, the perpetrators transferred 215,000 USDT.ETH to various crypto wallets. The FBI, upon discovering the fraud, requested that Tether freeze the involved accounts, which the company did on December 31, 2024.
Subsequent investigations revealed the scam was tied to a Binance.com account opened in October 2024 by Aigbokhan. This account had no activity until it began receiving funds from the fraudulent wallet. Forensic analysis traced the associated email activity and IP address logs to Lagos, Nigeria.
The FBI reported that 20,017 USDT.ETH was recovered from Aigbokhan’s wallet, and another 20,336 USDT.ETH from a second wallet, 0xC7bdBA7ffB126F68E8454C—together worth over ₦60 million. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Blaylock Jr. is now asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to approve the forfeiture of the recovered funds. Source: https://gazettengr.com/
