Why Is Elite Republican Trades, Truth Social’s “Pig Butchering” Scams Going Unreported?

File this story under Zero Surprise. Gizmodo, a website that reports on technical developments, filed a Freedom Of Information Act request. They found out some very interesting things about an “investing group” called Elite Republican Trades. More on that below, first we’re going to deal with Truth Social, which is the conduit to Elite Republican Trades. Gizmodo discovered that Truth Social users are “losing ridiculous amounts of money to scams.” The internet has joined us all together into one community and unfortunately, it’s a community with a thieving element. And where do the thieves go to look for marks? You guessed it, Donald Trump’s social media website.

Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt. But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money. We’re talking about people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time. […]

One person who says they lost $170,000 explained they were initially scammed on a different site but met someone on Truth Social who claimed they could help get their money back. That turned out to be a scam as well. But more often, the victims are first contacted on Truth Social before being told to take the conversation somewhere else, like WhatsApp. Truth Social seems to be a target-rich environment for people who are easy to con.

Another thing that sticks out about the complaints filed with the FTC is that they seem to involve plenty of elderly fans of Donald Trump. One 72-year-old man who reported chatting with a “beautiful” woman on the site was scammed out of $21,000. His complaint ends with, “I haven’t told my wife about this blunder. She still doesn’t know about it.” Another person in their 60s said they lost $500,000 to scammers on Truth Social and seemed to think there might be a way they could get their money back, telling the FTC, “After I pay this they promise there will be no more fees and I will receive my assets.”

Many of the people don’t seem to understand that any amount they might see on their end that’s supposedly sitting in an account is completely fictitious. The scammers will often give the victim access to a website that shows a certain dollar amount in “their” account but the money is long gone. It’s not sitting there for them to withdraw. It’s simply a ruse for the victim to see their imaginary money grow, luring them into “investing” even more.

There are many different kinds of scams on social media sites. We recently explored the dating app sextortion scams on Ashley Madison and sextortion that’s happening on Grindr with FOIA requests to the FTC. But the scams happening on Truth Social appear to be most commonly pig butchering, a method of gaining someone’s trust while getting them to give you increasingly large amounts of money, all while making it seem like the victim is making wise investments. Truth Social, with its older user base of Boomers who have access to a lifetime of savings and retirement accounts, appears to be an attractive target for scammers running pig butchering operations.

The story goes on to say that this kind of activity is not limited to Truth Social. No, this is an internet phenomenon. Granted. And then it goes on to inquire, “But if you were a scammer, who would you think might be the easiest marks on the planet, ready to believe anything a conman might say? If you said Trump supporters, you’re clearly not alone.” And this is the person that the GOP decided to put at the top of its ticket, for yet a third time.

Gizmodo tried to contact representatives from Truth Social on Thursday, but after sending an email to the address listed for media organizations on the social media platform’s website, it bounced back as undeliverable. After finally getting a hold of someone at something called the MZ Group, which works for Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, the representative said they have “a robust team that actively searches for scams and bots on the platform and bans them as soon as they’re found.” Follow-up questions did not receive a response.

This goes along with my premise that Truth Social is going to fold any day now. My main support for this theory comes from the fact that Donald Trump has reactivated the use of his main Twitter account, the one with 91M followers, which got disabled shortly after January 6, 2021 — which led to the development of Truth Social in the first place.

Trump resisted using that account, when Elon Musk reinstated him shortly after the purchase of Twitter, because he didn’t want Musk to “win.” There was still some fantasy at that point that Truth Social could pull its own weight, become a successful platform to rival, if not exceed, Twitter/X. Bear in mind that Trump Media & Technology group had big plans back in the day. They were not only going to be the next Twitter, they were going to be the next Amazon Studios, with their own production arm.

If you’re willing to buy into Donald Trump’s dream, you might as well set fire to your money. At least you’ll get a momentary ray of warmth from it, not the cold digital reality of looking at an empty bank account on a computer screen. Now we’re getting to the story you want to read, about a group called Elite Republican Trades.

August 2023 I was on the platform Truth Social interacting with [redacted] and what I thought was a response from him telling me to contact him for a chat on WhatsApp we talked and he proposed an investment opportunity in Crypto Currency. He referred me to Elite Republican Trades. I decided to check out the information. That is when [redacted] contacted me via WhatsApp and explained the platform and benefits for well-known investors namely President Trump (co-founder), Dan Bongino, Devin Nunes, and many more. We researched Mr. [redacted] and didn’t find any negative information.

I was instructed to open a Crypto Account to invest in Crypto. Throughout the following 11 months I’ve been investing with this platform seeing profits daily as promised. As recently as May Mr. [redacted] came to me with a bigger investment opportunity with billionaire Carl Ichan, I checked out the information and what I was told was factual, and I was looking at gaining a 5000 profit on my account and was promised to make no less than 3M. I gave Mr. [redacted] 100K to put into this platform. In the beginning of July he notified me that I made 3.5M in profit.

I requested a payout of my account at which time I found out I would get (1) bitcoin in my wallet per day until all profits were in place. At that time the money would be released–i.e. approximately August 2024 it would be released. A couple days later Mr. [redacted] contacted me and stated that he withdrew all the money from all the accounts I had invested with him because bitcoin was starting to rapidly lose money. He told me my account fell to 2.5M and he cashed it out and sent it to my Coinbase Wallet through Ethereum Meta Crypto.

He used another platform to send the money to me the assets is on the BNB (Binance Smart Chain Network. I can see the money in my Coinbase Wallet but I cannot access the account to make transactions. July 11th Mr. [redacted] contacted me and told me I had to pay a fee of 50K for me to receive a code to open the wallet for me to access, that never happened, no code was received. I contacted Mr. [redacted] and asked him about the code, he said his manager would have to sign off on the letter releasing the code.

Three days pass and I hear nothing, he’s unreachable. July 16th I finally hear from Mr. [redacted] and tells me that he plans to send money when the value goes back up. He then told me there was a slight problem I was being told I have to pay a fine because I had setup side accounts with Mr. [redacted] that they did not know about. I was not aware I had any side accounts, he told me it was all still part of the platform.

Then he gave me a phone number to contact him manager to reduce the fine, I contacted the manager and he was not happy with me because he said I never paid the fee to withdraw 2.5M. He said I owed $250,000. He said Mr. [redacted] told him I could not afford this so he lowered it to $15,000. As of today 17 July 2024 they are wanting me to send this 15K today. I am not sending any more money that’s the reason for this fraud report. I have everything in detail, conversations, emails, bank wire records if they are needed. I would like this information shared with the FBI!

So much for Elite Republican Trades. Once again, I simply marvel that this isn’t on the front page of the New York Times. This matter definitely needs to be with the FBI and we, the people, need to know why a group called Elite Republican Trades, featuring a former congressman and former U.S. president is involved in activity which puts the Nigerian Prince internet scam to shame? Is this the new face of the GOP? And this is a look they’re comfortable with? I have to believe that there are still enough sane, normal, old school Republicans that this can’t be the case. Or am I as gullible as the people who have gotten fleeced?

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