Advertisement

Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Wednesday, October 22, 2025

A cryptocurrency promoted in January by US first lady Melania Trump was part of a sophisticated fraud that "leveraged celebrity association and borrowed fame' to sell legitimacy to unsuspecting investors," a new legal filing has alleged.

More

Alternate links: Google News | Twitter

Melania used as 'window dressing' in 'pump and dump' fraud scheme resulting in millions lost

[image or embed]

-- alternet.org (@alternet.org) Oct 22, 2025 at 1:30 PM

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Further on this mess:

In April, crypto investors brought a federal class action lawsuit against Benjamin Chow, cofounder of crypto exchange Meteora, and Hayden Davis, cofounder of crypto venture capital firm Kelsier Labs, among other defendants, accusing them of a multimillion-dollar fraud involving a single memecoin, $M3M3.

Later, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, expanding the allegations to include racketeering activity. They claimed the pair had colluded to rig the market for $LIBRA, a coin promoted by Javier Milei, president of Argentina, which collapsed in value shortly after launch.

On Tuesday, the plaintiffs sought the court's permission to file yet another amended complaint, based on alleged information provided by an anonymous whistleblower. With Chow acting as the "commander," the pair launched, pumped, and dumped at least 15 crypto coins, the proposed second amended complaint alleges, including $MELANIA. The scheme allegedly inflicted millions of dollars in losses on unwitting investors.

Trump, who is not a named defendant in the lawsuit, was used as "window dressing for a crime engineered by Meteora and Kelsier," the proposed second amended complaint alleges. The filing further states that the plaintiffs do not allege that Trump or Milei "operated the scheme."


A-OK, as long as the Queen of Scowl made a bundle.

Gawd, these people.

#1 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-10-22 05:45 AM | Reply

"Unwitting investors"

BS.

Should read "stupid f^*%ing morons."

#2 | Posted by jpw at 2025-10-22 08:58 AM | Reply

The US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) investigates crimes spanning 200 federal laws.

"These types of investigation involve crimes that use the mails to facilitate fraud against consumers, business, and government. Federal statutes that surround these types of investigations include mail fraud and other criminal statutes when they are tied to the mails, such as bank fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud, wire fraud, and Internet/computer fraud. Mail fraud is a statute that is used in prosecuting many white collar crimes, including Ponzi schemes, 419 frauds, and other white collar crimes where the mail was used to facilitate the fraud."


#3 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-10-22 01:17 PM | Reply

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments: a href, b, i, p, br, ul, ol, li and blockquote. Others will be stripped out. Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Anyone can join this site and make comments. To post this comment, you must sign it with your Drudge Retort username. If you can't remember your username or password, use the lost password form to request it.
Username:
Password:

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy

Drudge Retort