At Least $857.5M: Scammers Cash In Big on $TRUMP Buzz

It’s no surprise that celebrity meme coins often attract scammers. But one bold scheme stood out to the Global Ledger team. Scammers exploited the $TRUMP coin to pull off a pump-and-dump scheme. However, they didn’t buy or sell the meme coin itself. The scheme we researched was more sophisticated and simple at the same time, bringing scammers at least $857.5 million.  

Scam tokens sent to $TRUMP’s main holders

Here’s how it works:

• New meme tokens often emerge following the hype surrounding a popular cryptocurrency or a trending event, such as those related to political figures like Trump. 
• These scam tokens are typically distributed to wallets of prominent crypto holders, creating a perception of value and legitimacy. 
• This tactic attracts the attention of other crypto holders, who begin purchasing scam tokens, driving up their market value. 
• Once the price reaches a peak, the creators sell their holdings, profiting while leaving buyers with tokens that have little to no actual worth.

Four meme tokens, over $857.5M in profits 

Scammers made about $857,533,978 on four tokens. 

1. 10.7 million JMilei 

This token also flowed through multiple intermediary wallets on its way to the liquidity pool and markets for further exchange.

2. More than 46 million MELON  

3. 50 million WTRUMP 

4. 8 million Putin. 

Scam tokens cashed out via major CEXs

The four scam tokens went to top centralised exchanges. These include OKX, Bybit, MEXC, Binance, Bitget, Crypto.com, and others. 

It’s highly likely that at least three tokens have the same creators 

At least three tokens— Putin, KING, and BUFFET—have creators linked to the same deposit wallets on CEX.

The majority of these scam meme coins were swapped using the Jupiter DEX aggregator or liquidity pools on Meteora. In four days, scammers withdrew $91,315,720 in SOL, USDT, USDC, and TRUMP from these three wallets. 

Final thoughts

Many tokens in such scenarios fail to gain success and never achieve substantial value; others (like those we researched) bring massive profits. Nevertheless, the scheme we described is active, with funds continuously flowing through it, bringing profits for its creators.