After the US Department of Justice sealed a court case docket involving crypto fraud tied to executives at MoonPay, US Attorney Jeanine Pinto now says it was a “clerical error,” claiming the District of Columbia court did not request full closure of the case from public view.
The case accused a Nigerian scammer of impersonating Trump associate Steve Witkoff to defraud two individuals of $250,000 in Ethereum, and reportedly involved the CEO and CFO of MoonPay.
Clerical error sealed docket, DOJ claims
Pirro, a former Fox News personality and Trump ally currently awaiting Senate confirmation to the permanent US attorney role, told NOTUS the entire docket was sealed due to a court clerk’s mistake.
According to her, the DOJ had only requested that an amended version of the complaint be made public after removing a company’s name to protect the victims’ identities.
“The court made a ministerial, clerical error that, as soon as we realized it, within hours, the whole docket was unsealed,” Pirro said. “They admitted we never asked for the docket to be sealed.”
Prosecutors filed the amended complaint and a separate sealed motion last week. By Monday, however, the entire court file was inaccessible to the public. The matter was discovered after investigative outlet NOTUS linked the redacted second names of “Ivan” and “Mouna” in the complaint to MoonPay’s leadership.
DOJ redacted the names of the victims
The original and amended complaints referenced two victims only by their first names, while their full identities were not disclosed in the public version. The names and linked wallet address match those of MoonPay’s CEO Ivan Soto-Wright and US CFO Mouna Ammari Siala.
The wallet address allegedly used to send the funds to the scammer had previously been tied to Soto-Wright in a separate 2023 court filing.
Federal prosecutors had attempted to redact the original document to protect the names of victims. However, both versions of the complaint reportedly included an unredacted link to a blockchain transaction that allowed the public to trace the wallet address, revealing a connection to Soto-Wright.
“This is the type of case where victims, including individuals, employees of a company, as well as a victim company, have a right not to have their names included in a complaint,” Pirro told NOTUS in defense of the redactions.
According to the complaint, the alleged Nigerian scammer impersonated real estate developer Steve Witkoff, the co-chair of Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee. The fraudster used a typographical trick, replacing the lowercase “L” in “inaugural” with an uppercase “I” in the fake email address, steve_witkoff@t47lnaugural.
MoonPay execs favoured over other victims in funds recovery
MoonPay has had previous business dealings involving Trump-related cryptos. The company had been an exclusive partner in trading $TRUMP, a memecoin tied to the Trump family. Executives reportedly boasted about the profits made from the token’s success.
7 days ago, $TRUMP took the crypto world by storm
🫡 MoonPay was picked as the token’s official onramp, through our partners at @moonshot
🚀 750,000 new people created a MoonPay account
⛓ we saw a 1,023% increase in first-time onchain transactions
BIG WEEK! pic.twitter.com/4FiC1Xt4ti
— MoonPay 🟣 (@moonpay) January 24, 2025
Naysayers argue the DOJ was only trying to recover funds for MoonPay’s executives due to their relationship with President Trump, and enforcement actions against other crypto companies have waned.
“If you’re friendly with Trump and you’re a Trump crypto bro, you get the DOJ proactively trying to recover your assets,” Mark Hays, a crypto policy advocate with Americans for Financial Reform, told NOTUS.
One former prosecutor who recently left the DC Attorney’s Office, speaking anonymously, said that while it’s common to file specific documents under seal like medical records or national security materials, it is rare for the entire docket to be closed without a specific motion.
