The X (formerly Twitter) accounts belonging to two members of former United States’ President Donald Trump’s family were hacked on Wednesday and used to promote a Solana meme coin.
The hacks came as the former president prepared to release his crypto policy platform and his campaign wrestled with the fallout of a foreign cyber attack, CBS reported.
Shortly after 8:15 p.m. ET, the X account belonging to Trump’s daughter-in-law, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, appeared to announce that the digital currency project, dubbed World Liberty Financial, had been launched.
The account provided several links to Trump’s 1.7 million followers to a coin and websites claiming to be “the only official channels of World Liberty Financial.”
One minute later, Donald Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump’s X account also posted an endorsement and a website link.
The website linked to the Trump family posts had been created earlier in the day Tuesday and registered via an anonymous domain hosting platform called Njalla Okta LLC, according to domain lookup site WhoIs.com.
Domiciled in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, Njalla Okta was created by a cofounder of The Pirate Bay, a dark-web marketplace.
All of this makes it nearly impossible for the public to trace the identity of the person behind the fake World Liberty Financial sites.
A few minutes after Lara Trump’s posts, her husband, Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump, appeared to use his own X account to write “This is a scam!!” He wrote that his wife and his sister’s “profiles have been compromised.”
The X account of Eric Trump, along with the official World Liberty Financial X account warned people about the hacked account and not to invest in the Solana meme coin as it is in no way backed by the Trump family.
”ALERT: Lara’s and Tiffany Trump’s X accounts have been hacked. Do NOT click on any links or purchase any tokens shared from their profiles. We’re actively working to fix this, but please stay vigilant and avoid scams!”, World Liberty Tweeted
Eric Trump added that both compromised X accounts were locked down minutes after the fake post was made but several users confirmed that it was a little too late as the tweet has already garnered enough likes and retweets.
All of these posts, including Eric Trump’s warning, have since been deleted. But not before screenshots captured the contents.
Spokespeople for the Trump presidential campaign and the Trump Organisation did not reply to requests for comment Tuesday about the reported hacks, or the status of the Trump crypto venture. CNBC also contacted Eric Trump for comment via X, and did not immediately receive a reply.
The incident is the latest apparent stumble in the Trump family’s effort to launch a crypto platform. After the Fake tweet was put out, the price of the token surged to an all-time high of 0.005314 SOL after starting to trade at 0.0001286 SOL just hours before.
At the time of going to press, the token has gone live on DexScreener for over 10 hours and has now dropped more than 90% from its all-time high.
The development was not the first time a fake meme coin has been linked to Donald Trump.
In June the DJT token was promoted and speculated to have links to Donald Trump and his family, Barron Trump.
The token was involved in a rug pull after its launch and the Donald Trump family neither confirmed or denied the token.
