Meteora Gave Trump Team $4.2M Airdrop Hours After Founder Sued for Memecoin Scams
Three addresses linked to the Trump staff acquired a $4.2 million airdrop of $MET tokens from Meteora simply hours after a federal class-action lawsuit accused the protocol’s co-founder, Benjamin Chow, of orchestrating pump-and-dump schemes utilizing Trump household endorsements.
Blockchain analytics agency Arkham Intelligence identified the recipients because the TRUMP token developer tackle and two addresses that offered intensive liquidity for TRUMP on day one.
All three addresses instantly deposited your complete airdrop to OKX change, doubtlessly to money it out.
The Link Between Meteora and the Trump Team
The airdrop occurred as Chow faces accusations of weaponizing superstar endorsements from Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to defraud retail buyers of a minimum of $57 million by way of systematic pump-and-dump operations throughout $M3M3, $LIBRA, $MELANIA, $ENRON, and $TRUST tokens.
The Second Amended Class Action Complaint seeks disgorgement of all earnings, trebling of compensatory damages beneath RICO statutes, and appointment of a certified unbiased receiver over Meteora’s upgradeable smart-contract packages.
Lawsuit accuses Meteora’s Chow of $57M fraud utilizing Melania Trump and Milei endorsements throughout $LIBRA, $MELANIA and different tokens in pump-and-dump scheme.#Melania #Trump #Memecoinhttps://t.co/s40u2vsmzA
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) October 23, 2025
Analysis revealed that wallets related to $MELANIA liquidity provision have been eligible for the $MET airdrop, with three out of 4 LP wallets receiving tokens.
The Melania token is linked to the identical staff behind $LIBRA, which crashed after President Milei retracted his endorsement.
Notably, different tokens linked to the alleged fraud ring, together with $AIAI and $M3M3, acquired zero $MET within the airdrop distribution.
Fraud Pattern Across Multiple Tokens
The lawsuit describes a scheme involving narrative manipulation with borrowed fame, insider-funded accounts executing trades, hype by way of paid influencers, worth spikes by way of Meteora’s controls, liquidation of positions to empty liquidity, and repeated themes with new variations.
Within hours of launch, the deployer pockets withdrew over $110 million in USDC stablecoin liquidity, stripping the token of its basis and inflicting immediate worth collapse, coinciding with Milei’s post-retraction.
The $MELANIA token has since crashed from a peak of $13.73 to $0.095, erasing billions in market worth and shedding over 99% from its all-time high.
Forensic evaluation recognized a central coordinating pockets prefixed 0xcEA that repeatedly funded deployer wallets, creating tokens, seeding preliminary liquidity, and financing sniper wallets capturing early provide.
Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis, who co-founded each $LIBRA and $MELANIA, acknowledged in a YouTube interview that “we sniped our personal coin to stop snipers from sniping our personal coin.”
Trump Crypto Gains Hit $1 Billion
The Trump family has generated pre-tax gains of around $1 billion over the previous 12 months from crypto ventures, together with memecoins, stablecoins, and DeFi platforms.
The $TRUMP and $MELANIA cash generated roughly $427 million, whereas World Liberty Financial token gross sales fetched round $550 million.
The stablecoin challenge USD1 raised $2.71 billion from reserves and charges, with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund-backed MGX offering $2 billion in funding to Binance utilizing USD1.
The $4.2 million Meteora airdrop to Trump-linked addresses comes simply hours after President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, brewing hypothesis about potential pardons for different crypto figures going through authorized challenges.
CZ’s pardon adopted months of efforts to spice up the Trump household’s crypto firm, with Trump indicating to advisers he was sympathetic to arguments of political persecution.
Some observers now query whether or not Meteora’s founder may obtain comparable consideration regardless of going through RICO prices and fraud allegations.
Chow resigned from Meteora in February 2025 following the $LIBRA controversy, with Jupiter co-founder Meow stating he confirmed “a scarcity of judgment and care.”
A leaked video confirmed Chow expressing shock about Davis’ misconduct, stating, “I really feel so sick, as a result of I gave him Melania. I fucked up as a result of I enabled the man that ought to not have been enabled.”
The lawsuit alleges Kelsier Labs secretly agreed to take a position roughly $2 million in Meteora’s operations as a pay-to-play buy-in, with whistleblower communications confirming that Davis acted beneath Chow’s directions on greater than 15 token launches.
The submit Meteora Gave Trump Team $4.2M Airdrop Hours After Founder Sued for Memecoin Scams appeared first on Cryptonews.
