The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking to recover assets from a Lagos-based suspect, Ehiremen Aigbokhan, accused of stealing over ₦460 million from funds intended for U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
According to a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the FBI, Mr. Aigbokhan is at the center of a cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering scheme that targeted donors to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee.
The FBI is also working to secure an arrest warrant against him.
Court documents reviewed by Peoples Gazette show that Mr. Aigbokhan and accomplices used a Business Email Compromise (BEC) technique to deceive victims into transferring money into their cryptocurrency wallets.
In the lead-up to the January 20, 2025, inauguration, several fake email addresses resembling those of the official inauguration team were created and used to solicit donations.
One such email, sent on December 26, 2024, originated from @t47lnaugural.com—closely mimicking the official domain @t47inaugural.com used by the event’s co-chair, Steve Witkoff.
The fraudulent email successfully tricked a victim into sending 250,300 USDT.ETH, a cryptocurrency amount valued at over ₦400 million at parallel market rates.
Shortly after the transfer, approximately 215,000 USDT.ETH was funneled to various cryptocurrency wallets.
The FBI, upon discovering the scam, quickly contacted Tether, the crypto operator, which complied with a request to freeze the suspicious accounts on December 31, 2024.
Investigations led authorities to a crypto wallet linked to Mr. Aigbokhan in Lagos.
Further tracing revealed that the stolen funds had been partially transferred to a Binance account in his name, created in October 2024.
Records showed that this account had no previous activity prior to the scam-related deposits.
Digital forensic analysis further tied the fraudulent email operations and wallet activity to Lagos-based IP addresses, strengthening the case against the Nigerian suspect.
So far, the FBI has seized 20,017 USDT.ETH from Mr. Aigbokhan’s wallet and another 20,336 USDT.ETH from a separate account, with the combined total worth over ₦60 million at the current black market exchange rate.
The Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Rick Blaylock Jr., has requested that the court authorize the forfeiture of the recovered assets.
