Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump Are Running a $1.2 Billion Felony Fraud Scheme that is Fully Prosecutable in New York.

Other crypto founders are serving eight, twelve, and twenty-five years in prison for the same conduct. The only thing that separates the Trump sons from those men is their last name.

May 24, 2026

A note from the author. What you are about to read is an article that outlines the evidence of criminal conduct under New York State law, all with sources available directly in hyperlinks in the text. After the article is a script you can use to report this conduct to the officials who seem to be ignoring it. After that you’ll find over a dozen books, booklets, and model legislation to share with your representative, all for free from The Existentialist Republic.

This article will show you two sets of men. The first set committed specific acts at their cryptocurrency companies, faced prosecution, were convicted, and are serving years in federal prison right now. The second set is Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who committed acts that the publicly available evidence already documents at their own cryptocurrency venture. We will lay the conduct of both sets side by side, act for act, and the conduct will match. Then we will ask you to find the difference between the men in prison and the two men who are not, and we will give you the name and the phone number of the offices that can answer that question for you.

Braden Karony ran a cryptocurrency called SafeMoon. He told the people who bought SafeMoon tokens that the pool of money backing the token was locked, so that company insiders could not withdraw it. The pool was not locked, and insiders withdrew the money. In April 2026 a federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Karony to one hundred months in prison. One hundred months is eight years and four months, and the sentence was punishment for telling buyers a false statement about how the token worked.

Alex Mashinsky ran a company called Celsius that told customers it was a crypto bank where ordinary people could deposit their savings and earn interest. Mashinsky told customers to keep their deposits in Celsius while he sold his own holdings, and he told customers the company was financially sound while its balance sheet held a $1.2 billion hole. When Celsius froze withdrawals in 2022, about 1.7 million customers were locked out of roughly $4.7 billion in assets. A federal judge sentenced Mashinsky to twelve years in prison.

Remember Karony and Mashinsky, because this article compares their conduct to the conduct of two other men.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump founded a cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial. In the sixteen months after World Liberty launched its token in late 2024, the venture generated at least $1.2 billion in cash for the Trump family, which is more cash than Donald Trump’s real estate business produced in the eight years from 2010 to 2017. World Liberty’s governing documents direct seventy-five percent of token sale revenue to a Trump family entity. This article sets out how World Liberty took in money, what World Liberty told the people who bought its token, and how that conduct matches the conduct that sent Karony and Mashinsky to prison. No prosecutor has filed a case.

World Liberty Financial launched in October 2024 and described its product as decentralized finance. The word decentralized was the central sales claim. Decentralized means that no single person or company controls the money, that the rules are fixed in public computer code rather than set by a company executive, and that every token holder shares control by voting. World Liberty repeated the claim in its marketing. World Liberty called its product a decentralized governance platform and invited ordinary people to buy the token on the strength of that claim. A legal analysis published by Duke University later concluded that the structure was issuer-controlled governance with a voting feature rather than decentralized governance.

The decentralization claim was false, and the falsehood was written into the computer code itself.

World Liberty’s smart contract contained an administrative function that allowed the company to freeze any token holder’s wallet, which stopped that holder from transferring or selling their tokens. One investor, Justin Sun, states that World Liberty did not disclose this freezing function to the people buying the token, and Sun describes the freezing function as a hidden trap door. Sun is not a bystander. He founded the major blockchain Tron, he invested roughly $45 million in World Liberty, and the venture named him an advisor. Sun has direct knowledge of the freezing function, because in September 2025 World Liberty used the function on Sun, freezing his tokens after a dispute, tokens that had been worth more than $100 million.

Justin Sun has his own separate legal dispute with World Liberty, and this article does not rely on Sun as a sympathetic victim. The relevant fact is the freezing function that Sun’s lawsuit brought to public attention, because that function affected every token holder. World Liberty described its product as decentralized, yet company insiders controlled the product completely. The Trump family held as much as ninety percent of the governance tokens and insiders held fifty-six percent of the total token supply. In an actual governance vote in March 2026, ten wallets cast seventy-six percent of the votes. The people who bought the token in reliance on the decentralization claim received a product that worked the opposite way from the claim. Company insiders could freeze those buyers out of their own tokens, even though the word decentralized had told those buyers that no insider held such control.

The token then lost value. The token lost roughly eighty percent of its value, and the ordinary buyers, who held no freezing function and held only a small fraction of the votes, bore that loss.

Consider again what Karony did. Karony made a specific statement about how his token worked, namely that the backing money was locked and would protect buyers, and the statement was false because insiders kept a power they had concealed. A jury convicted Karony, and a judge sentenced him to eight years and four months.

Now compare World Liberty. Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and their partners made a specific statement about how their token worked, namely that the product was decentralized so that no insider could control a buyer’s tokens, and the statement was false because insiders kept a power they had concealed, namely the freezing function in the contract. The two situations share each required component: a statement about how the token worked, a concealed insider power that contradicted the statement, and ordinary buyers who lost money once the concealed power became public.

Mashinsky’s case supplies a second matching component. Mashinsky’s crime was not only the false statement about safety; it was also self-dealing, meaning that Mashinsky enriched himself while the customers who trusted him lost their money. World Liberty directed seventy-five percent of its revenue to a Trump family entity while ordinary buyers who held the token lost money. A judge sentenced Mashinsky to twelve years for that combination of conduct. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump used the same combination of conduct at a venture that paid their family at least $1.2 billion.

The sentences that federal courts impose for this conduct are a matter of public record. A court sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried to twenty-five years. A court sentenced Do Kwon to fifteen years. Each of these founders made false statements to the people who gave them money, and each is in prison now. The conduct at World Liberty matches this conduct. The difference is that no prosecutor with subpoena power has examined World Liberty.

A prosecutor does not need a federal court to charge this conduct. New York law already defines the offense and it is fully prosecutable within New York jurisdiction.

Scheme to defraud in the first degree, set out in New York Penal Law section 190.65, covers a scheme to defraud more than one person through false representations, where the defendant obtains property from at least one of those people. Scheme to defraud in the first degree is a class E felony, and the offense carries a maximum sentence of four years in state prison. The decentralization claim, made to many buyers and contradicted by the concealed freezing function, fits the statute’s requirement of a systematic course of conduct directed at more than one person.

Four years is a smaller maximum than the alternative. A prosecutor could instead charge grand larceny in the first degree, a class B felony that carries a maximum of twenty-five years, and the dollar amounts at World Liberty exceed that statute’s threshold many times over. Grand larceny in the first degree, however, requires proof that specific buyers handed over specific property because they believed the specific false statement, and that proof requires the buyer records and internal company communications that only a subpoena can produce. The public record already supports the scheme-to-defraud charge, so this article names the scheme-to-defraud charge. It isn’t a stretch to say that more evidence likely exists of further criminal activity, should investigations be pursued.

The four-year maximum still establishes the central comparison. The cautious, easily proven version of this case would still send an ordinary defendant to state prison. An ordinary founder who committed this conduct faces up to four years, while Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump face nothing.

State court is the right venue for this offense. Fraud committed against a state’s residents is a state crime, charged under state law, in state court. New York Penal Law section 190.65 is a New York statute that New York prosecutors enforce, and the buyers the statute protects live in New York.

The dual sovereignty doctrine resolves the jurisdiction issue. Under Gamble v. United States, a state government and the federal government are separate sovereigns, and a state criminal charge proceeds on its own whether or not any federal case exists. A state conviction also lies outside the President’s pardon power, because the pardon power covers only federal offenses. The Constitution assigns this conduct to state prosecutors as a check and balance to create a justice system that is less easily captured by bad actors, since there is more to capture when the power is spread across many jurisdictions.

The evidence decides this case. The SafeMoon and Celsius prosecutions applied ordinary fraud law to founders who lied about their tokens, and prosecutors brought those cases against private citizens who held no public office and ran no campaign. The same statute, applied the same way, covers the conduct at World Liberty. A prosecutor who charges this conduct performs the ordinary duty of the office.

Set the two sets of men side by side one last time.

Braden Karony told buyers a false statement about how his token worked. A jury convicted him, and he will spend eight years and four months in federal prison. Alex Mashinsky told customers a false statement about safety and enriched himself while those customers lost their savings. A judge sentenced him to twelve years in federal prison. Sam Bankman-Fried and Do Kwon told the people who funded them false statements, and they are serving twenty-five years and fifteen years.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump told buyers that World Liberty was decentralized, so that no insider could control a buyer’s tokens, while company insiders held a concealed function that let them freeze any buyer’s tokens. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump directed seventy-five percent of the venture’s revenue to a Trump family entity while ordinary buyers who held the token lost roughly eighty percent of their money. The conduct matches the conduct in every case named above. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have not been investigated, have not been charged, and have not appeared as defendants in any court.

So look at the two sets of men and find the difference. The convicted defendants and the two uncharged men committed the same documented acts. One visible feature distinguishes the two uncharged men from the rest. Their last name is Trump, and their father is the President of the United States.

You do not have to decide on your own whether that is the reason. You can ask the people whose job it is to answer, and three kinds of officials can act.

Two officials can charge this conduct directly. The New York Attorney General accepts reports of corporate wrongdoing and fraud at ag.ny.gov/file-complaint or by phone at 1-800-771-7755. The Manhattan District Attorney accepts public reports at 212-335-9000.

One official can order it investigated. Governor Kathy Hochul can direct the Attorney General to open an investigation, and she accepts messages from the public through the governor’s contact form or by phone at 518-474-8390.

Ask a friend to make these calls and you just doubled the pressure, ask an entire Indivisible chapter to join in and you’re looking at a potential 100x multiplier on how much pressure these officials feel as people ask “isn’t this your job?”

While residents of any state can refer the conduct to NY officials, if you live outside New York another option opens up. The attorney general of any state can charge fraud committed against the residents of that state, so if anyone in your state bought these tokens, that is standing for a criminal fraud investigation.

Here is a message you can send or read aloud. Fill in the three bracketed parts and keep to what is documented.

“My name is [your name]. [If you live in New York, add: I am a New York resident.] I am reporting conduct I believe is a felony under New York Penal Law section 190.65, scheme to defraud in the first degree. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump founded World Liberty Financial, marketed it to the public as decentralized, and concealed a function that let insiders freeze any buyer’s tokens, while directing seventy-five percent of the revenue to their family and leaving ordinary buyers with losses of roughly eighty percent. Other cryptocurrency founders, including Braden Karony and Alexander Mashinsky, are serving prison sentences for similar conduct. I want to know why this conduct has not been investigated and charged, and I am asking for a response. You can reach me at [your email or phone].”

We need 10 new subscribers per article to keep going and believe it or not we don’t hit that number every article. It’s the bystander effect, despite having millions of readers, everyone assumes someone else will step up.

Do not let it be the reason you skip a meal or miss rent.

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