Impersonators have flocked to a soon-to-be-announced cryptocurrency venture with ties to presidential candidate Donald Trump and his family, exploiting a lack of information about the project to promote fake cryptocurrency tokens.
The Trump family, led by former President Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have launched a campaign on social media to promote an upcoming project called World Liberty Financial. For nearly a month, the Trump family has been teasing the project’s launch in cryptic posts that offered few details.
In an August 6 post on X, Eric wrote that he had “really fallen in love with cryptocurrency.” The next day, in another post, Donald Jr. said he was “about to shake up the crypto world” and warned his followers not to “get left behind.” On August 22, in a Truth Social post, the former president himself promoted the venture. “For too long, average Americans have been oppressed by big banks and the financial elite. Now is the time for us to stand up. Together,” Trump wrote.
But the family has yet to provide any direct details about World Liberty Financial’s purpose or function, and third-party operators are exploiting the information vacuum.
In late August, an ad appeared at the bottom of the project’s Telegram channel. It was a message from the Trump family “thatchic)’ is an ad advertising a fake crypto token giveaway. The ad, which is still live at the time of writing, leads to an external webpage featuring an illustration of Donald Trump unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a Superman-esque costume with a “T” logo underneath. Visitors are promised a chance to win up to $15,000 worth of crypto tokens and are prompted to “Connect to your wallet now (chic) and make the world great again.”
On August 29, a post on World Liberty Financial’s Telegram channel warned its now-over 200,000 subscribers not to watch the ads. “We are aware of ads circulating on Telegram posing as ads for our company, promoting fake airdrops and token sales,” the post said. “At this time, we are not conducting any airdrops or token sales.” However, a week later, the ads remain up, and a competing Telegram channel associated with them has as many as 50,000 subscribers. It is unclear how much money was stolen, if any at all.
Eric Trump did not respond to questions about the company’s failure to prevent fake ads from being distributed through the World Liberty Financial Telegram channel. Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.
On September 3, hackers allegedly took over the X accounts of Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, and the former president’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, and used them to sell another crypto token purportedly linked to World Liberty Financial. The post has since been deleted, but screenshots show that it was viewed by at least 200,000 people. Around 2,000 people are believed to have purchased a total of $1.8 million worth of fake tokens, according to data from token analytics platform DEXTools.
