DEEPFAKESMade In Macedonia: Americans Lose Millions Buying Fake Donald Trump Debit Cards
It is an open secret in this corner of the Balkans that a startlingly successful digital disinformation and fake news industry that emerged in the Macedonian city of Veles alongside the political rise of Donald Trump helped lay the groundwork for a thriving new business in fraudulent goods marketed through encrypted channels to Trump-style conservatives and “patriots” an ocean away. Neither the Republican presidential hopeful Trump nor any of his organizations appear to have any connection to the manufacturers, platforms, or sellers.
Last September, 86-year-old Ann Bratton thought she’d stumbled onto the investment of a lifetime.
An ad on one of the encrypted Telegram app channels the Nashville-area retiree had joined was offering debit-like “Trump cards” featuring the billionaire U.S. ex-president’s image, each supposedly preloaded with $200,000. After years of forking out tens of thousands of dollars on souvenir banknotes, coins, and other Trump memorabilia, she calculated that she could quickly and easily turn a $6,000 investment into a $4 million nest egg.
What she didn’t know was that behind the offer of “Trump Collection” cards was an opaque group of web-based vendors from a faded industrial city 8,500 kilometers away. And that city, in the Balkan country of North Macedonia, was already notorious for being home to legions of scammers who had fraudulently monetized Donald Trump’s popularity in the United States and around the world.
Neither the Republican presidential hopeful Trump nor any of his organizations appear to have any connection to the manufacturers, platforms, or sellers.
But it’s an open secret in this corner of the Balkans that a startlingly successful digital disinformation and fake news industry that emerged in the Macedonian city of Veles alongside the political rise of Donald Trump helped lay the groundwork for a thriving new business in fraudulent goods marketed through encrypted channels to Trump-style conservatives and “patriots” an ocean away.
And local authorities have acknowledged that the perpetrators appear to be netting huge profits by convincing pro-Trump Americans that a return to power of the 45th U.S. president will ensure huge windfalls for holders of the knockoff goods.
“I believe in President Trump, and I think he is honest. I believed that I was investing in the future,” Bratton said of her seven-year splurge on quasi-banknotes, tokens, coins, and more recently the bogus debit cards. “I can’t even remember where it was all advertised.”
Months of research and infiltration of closed groups on the Telegram platform by RFE/RL’s Balkan Service have identified 69 individuals who posted offers for such fraudulent cards, with the digital trail placing two-thirds of them in Veles. The journalists found that most of the 88 websites actively hawking such products to “American patriots” had domains registered in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.
The number of vendors offering them to unwary customers is likely to be much higher, since several of the closed Telegram channels that they were using had upwards of 300 members.
