Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency venture’s website employs an anonymous privacy service that has been connected to Russian cybercriminals in the past, according to the report.
The domain name registration company for World Liberty Financials uses Withheld for Privacy, an Icelandic service that lets websites conceal their domain information, to offer privacy solutions for their website.
Although there is no indication that World Liberty Financial committed any wrongdoing by using Withheld for Privacy’s services, it does raise concerns about the nature of the company, its founders, and its intended business model.
Though the project’s specifics have not yet been revealed, Trump and his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have posted about World Liberty Financial on social media.
“It’s not unusual to see multiple affiliated business entities or to have various privacy measures in place at the early stages of a crypto rollout,” stated Jay Kesten, a Florida State University College of Law law professor with a focus on corporate governance. Nevertheless, investors should have the right to complete and equitable disclosure of a wide range of information if and when a cryptocurrency offer is made to the general public.
The who.is website states that Namecheap, a website registrar that contracts Withheld for Privacy to handle domain privacy services, registered World Liberty Financials’ website on June 21, 2024.
According to Icelandic business filing data, Withheld for Privacy was founded in 2021 by Mexican-American Sergio Raygoza Hernandez, who resides in the United States. The company is headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, which is regarded as a leader in internet freedom due to its complete anonymity policy.
Withheld for Privacy has been charged in the past with hiding the identities of fraudulent individuals.
The Russian cyberhacking group DarkSide produced ransomware that was linked to two websites hosted by Withheld for Privacy, according to a July 2021 malware analysis report published by the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
After the financial services company Comercia Bank filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency, Withheld for Privacy was ordered in May 2021 to turn over disputed domain names to the WIPO.
According to the complaint, Withheld for Privacy “registered and used the disputed domain names in bad faith” and assisted con artists in creating websites with similar names to deceive users.
The Dutch scam identifier website ScamAdviser has rated Withheld for Privacy as “Suspicious”.
According to a report on the website, this registrar has a high percentage of fraud sites and spammers. It appears that the domain registration company draws in websites with a very low to low trust rating.
Posts on web chat groups indicate that there are other websites with hidden registration details using the Icelandic domain, including what appears to be a phony bank and websites pretending to be Apple and the exchange platform Coinbase.
Even though Namecheap is home to numerous well-known companies, it has been accused of having connections to criminal individuals.
Organization with a domain reputation In the final quarter of 2021, Namecheap was ranked by Spamhaus as the second most misused domain registrar.
Unidentified cybercriminals were allegedly using domain names registered to two businesses, Namecheap and Above, in 2023 to try to con clients, according to the international law firm Latham & Watkins. Neither of those businesses was mentioned in the lawsuit.
There are still unanswered questions about World Liberty Financial’s precise nature and goals. Only a link to its X and Telegram accounts, which claim it is creating a decentralized finance service that will propel the widespread adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance, are available on the project’s website; no other information is provided.
AMG Software Solutions, a company that was also registered in July to an address in Puerto Rico, is the owner of the $700 trademark that was filed in July. However, filings indicate that the trademark will be formally registered in the business-friendly state of Delaware in July 2024.
Corporations Service Company (CSC), a Delaware-based organization that provides and manages corporations’ domains by functioning as a management intermediary between a business and the state, is AMG Software Solutions’ assigned agent, which is an entity legally designated to act on behalf of a business. On behalf of companies, it offers legal and tax services like accounting and auditing.
The cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk revealed that it had acquired a draft white paper outlining the management structure of World Liberty Financial and naming two of its key personnel as co-founders of the censorship-free content creation app Subify, Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro.
