Fraudsters impersonating the President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance inaugural committee deceptively stole hundreds of thousands of dollars
The perpetrators used fake email addresses made to look like they belonged to the inaugural committee to ” trick or coerce victims into providing them money”
The story was covered by multiple Nigerian newspapers, some of whose headlines and narratives may have created confusion.…CONTINUE READING
Social media posts and Nigerian news websites claimed that a Nigerian-based ‘Yahoo Boy’ conned United States (US) President Donald Trump out of 250,000 dollars
Legit.ng reports that ‘Yahoo Boy’ (an alternative name for ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ or ‘G-Boys’) is used to describe people who defraud mostly non-Nigerians via the internet
The term is a savvy name for a Nigerian cyber fraudster. It could be a picker, loader, hacker, swindler, and sometimes cruelly, a money ritualist — feigned as ‘Yahoo Plus’. It is a dominant form of criminality perpetrated by Nigerian youths.
Babatunde Olushola (@itsSh0la), a well-followed X (formerly Twitter) user, posted thus on Friday, July 4, 2025: “A yahoo boy scammed a whole Donald Trump, the President of US 250,000 dollars. Some of you are really audacious.”
International media, including American magazine Fortune and The Independent UK reported on the case.
The story was reported by several Nigerian newspapers, some of whose headlines may have created confusion. One titled its article ‘FBI pursues Lagos Yahoo Boy for defrauding U.S. President Donald Trump of 2025 inauguration funds’, while another used the headline ‘How Lagos Yahoo Boy duped U.S. President Donald Trump of 2025 inauguration funds’, before going on to explain in the body of the news story that a donor was scammed.
Verification of Trump scam victim claim
Official records from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) confirm that there was a $250,300 cryptocurrency scam. However, Trump was not the direct victim. It was a donor aiming to contribute to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee who was scammed by an impostor that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) traced to Nigeria.
Therefore, posts claiming a Nigerian ‘Yahoo boy’ scammed Trump out of $250,000 are misleading.
