Trump Bucks: The Pitch, May 2026 Indictment, and Refunds

The Trump Bucks scam sells novelty cards, coins, and certificates to Trump supporters with the false promise that the items are legal tender worth thousands of dollars. They are not. They have no connection to Donald Trump, his campaign, or the Trump Organization, and in May 2026 federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted two North Macedonian nationals on wire fraud and identity theft charges tied to the scheme.¹

What the Pitch Looks Like

The sales pitch is straightforward and completely false. Buy a Trump-branded card, coin, or certificate now, the seller says, and once Trump is in power it will become real money, redeemable at any bank or ATM. Promotional materials claim a $99.99 purchase will be worth $10,000 or more. Some ads tell buyers they can load up to $500,000 on a single card and pull $5,000 a day from ATMs.²

The product list has grown over time and now includes “Trump Bucks,” “Golden Checks,” “DJT Diamond Checks,” “TRB Membership Cards,” “TRB Black Cards,” “Golden Badges,” “Trump Dollars,” “Ruby Certificates,” “Diamond Bucks,” and membership booklets sold as a required step to “redeem” the other items.¹ Ads name Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Walmart, and Costco as places that will honor them. Every one of those companies has denied any affiliation.³

Paying once isn’t the end of it. After the initial purchase, a “support” contact reaches out through messaging apps asking for “activation fees” to unlock the promised funds. Victims who have already paid are pressured to pay again, and again. Those who comply either get hit with another request or stop hearing back. The cards fail in every ATM they’re tried in because they are souvenirs with no financial functionality at all.²

How Victims Are Reached

Most of the scam’s reach comes from AI-generated deepfake videos that put fake endorsements of the products in the mouths of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Ivanka Trump, and other recognizable figures. The clips run on Telegram, Facebook, and YouTube.²

A Forbes investigation found deepfake-laden ads on Facebook had been viewed more than 100 million times, with one page spending $1.5 million in four months, and YouTube ads adding over 85 million views, with one account spending nearly $800,000. Meta and Google removed accounts after being contacted by reporters, citing policies against fraud and against unlabeled deepfakes in political ads. Meta sent cease-and-desist letters and referred the matter to law enforcement.⁴ An October 2025 report from the Tech Transparency Project found 63 scam advertisers on Meta platforms had run over 150,600 political ads and spent $49 million combined, with many ads targeting users 65 and older. Meta disabled 35 of those accounts, though several had already spent over $1 million each.⁵

The May 2026 Federal Indictment

On May 13, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced charges against Goran Spiridonov, 25, and Kristina Janeva, 39, both citizens and residents of North Macedonia. Each defendant faces three counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud (with a maximum sentence of 20 years), and aggravated identity theft (which carries a mandatory consecutive two-year sentence).¹

Prosecutors allege that Spiridonov, Janeva, and unnamed co-conspirators abroad ran the scheme from at least 2023 through the indictment, selling fraudulent products through an online marketplace identified in court papers as “Marketplace-1” and through Telegram. The indictment says they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims across the United States, many of them senior citizens. One defendant allegedly told a victim a “Patriot Eagle” product could be exchanged for $10,000 upon Trump’s re-election.¹

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton called the products “a fictitious financial instrument” and said any claim of affiliation with the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization “cannot be further from the truth.” He also warned that “this conduct may be ongoing” and urged Americans not to send money or financial information to anyone pitching Trump Bucks. The FBI and the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation. Both defendants remain at large.¹

Who Is Running the Operation

The network traces back to Veles, North Macedonia, the same small city tied to disinformation operations during the 2016 U.S. election. A February 2024 investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty identified 69 individuals posting offers in closed Telegram channels, about two-thirds of them based in Veles. The channels contained scripts and instructions on “how to deceive the Americans.” North Macedonia’s Public Revenue Office reported that 98 individuals under 35 in the Veles area declared roughly $11 million in combined income from U.S.-based marketing and internet services over a two-year span, a surge investigators linked to these operations.²

Earlier U.S. reporting identified three Colorado-based companies behind related sales: Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future, and USA Patriots, operating from an industrial center in Aurora. ClickBank had facilitated some sales before discontinuing them, noting that products carried disclaimers labeling them “commemorative value only” while being “deceptively marketed” elsewhere.⁶⁷ Payments were also processed through CopeCart, a Germany-based platform with a U.S. branch licensed in Florida since January 2022. RFE/RL’s review of more than 80 scam-linked websites traced payment infrastructure to CopeCart’s Florida operations, with roughly 90% of registered products involving Trump-branded cards, coins, or similar items. CopeCart’s Florida manager told RFE/RL the company “did not tolerate fraud” and “strictly follows the procedures.” After RFE/RL published its findings, 33 Macedonian sellers withdrew their products from the platform. North Macedonian authorities had not announced any domestic criminal investigation tied to the Veles operations as of the U.S. indictment.⁸

Don’t Confuse Trump Bucks With Trump Accounts

“Trump Accounts” is a different thing entirely. It is a legitimate federal savings program for children, created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law on July 4, 2025, and administered through the IRS and Treasury.⁹ The name overlap has drawn its own round of scammers. Treasury says the government will never contact account holders by text or phone call about account activation; legitimate activation emails come only from no-reply@TrumpAccounts.Treasury.gov; and account holders should reach their accounts only through the official app or by typing TrumpAccounts.gov directly into the browser rather than relying on phone numbers found through search results.¹⁰

If You Paid for Trump Bucks

Stop sending money. Any follow-up contact asking for “activation fees,” taxes, shipping surcharges, or verification deposits is part of the same scam, not a path to recovering what you’ve already paid. Save every email, text, Telegram message, receipt, tracking number, and screenshot you can find, along with the names and phone numbers of anyone who contacted you.

Report the fraud to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and to the Federal Trade Commission. If you paid by credit card, contact your card issuer about a chargeback; if you paid by bank transfer, gift card, or cryptocurrency, call your bank or the issuing company immediately, because some transactions can still be reversed or frozen if reported quickly. If an older relative was the one who paid, your state’s adult protective services agency and attorney general’s office are additional places to file. U.S. Attorney Clayton has said the underlying fraud may still be active, and new variants continue to appear as sellers rework the pitch around current events.¹

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Two Foreign Nationals Charged With Fraudulently Using Trump Name to Scam Victims
2
RFE/RL. Macedonian Network Behind Trump Debit Card Scam
3
Yahoo News. Trump Bucks Promise Wealth to MAGA Supporters
4
Forbes. Deepfaked Celebrities Hawked a Massive Trump Scam on Facebook and YouTube
5
Tech Transparency Project. Meta Awash in Deepfake Scam Ads
6
Forbes. Trump Supporters Scammed by Novelty Items Advertised as Legal Tender
7
The Guardian. Trump Bucks Fake Currency Websites Taken Down
8
RFE/RL. Macedonian Trump Scam Network Exposed
9
Congressional Research Service. Trump Accounts
10
IRS. About Form 4547