Three addresses linked to the Trump team received a $4.2 million airdrop of $MET tokens from Meteora just hours after a federal class-action lawsuit accused the protocol’s co-founder, Benjamin Chow, of orchestrating pump-and-dump schemes using Trump family endorsements.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified the recipients as the TRUMP token developer address and two addresses that provided extensive liquidity for TRUMP on day one.
All three addresses immediately deposited the entire airdrop to OKX exchange, potentially to cash it out.
The Link Between Meteora and the Trump Team
The airdrop occurred as Chow faces accusations of weaponizing celebrity endorsements from Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to defraud retail investors of at least $57 million through systematic pump-and-dump operations across $M3M3, $LIBRA, $MELANIA, $ENRON, and $TRUST tokens.
The Second Amended Class Action Complaint seeks disgorgement of all profits, trebling of compensatory damages under RICO statutes, and appointment of a qualified independent receiver over Meteora’s upgradeable smart-contract programs.
Analysis revealed that wallets associated with $MELANIA liquidity provision were eligible for the $MET airdrop, with three out of four LP wallets receiving tokens.
The Melania token is linked to the same team behind $LIBRA, which crashed after President Milei retracted his endorsement.
Notably, other tokens linked to the alleged fraud ring, including $AIAI and $M3M3, received zero $MET in 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 via paid influencers, price spikes through Meteora’s controls, liquidation of positions to drain liquidity, and repeated themes with new variations.
Within hours of launch, the deployer wallet withdrew over $110 million in USDC stablecoin liquidity, stripping the token of its foundation and causing instant price 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 value and losing over 99% from its all-time high.
Forensic analysis identified a central coordinating wallet prefixed 0xcEA that repeatedly funded deployer wallets, creating tokens, seeding initial liquidity, and financing sniper wallets capturing early supply.
Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis, who co-founded both $LIBRA and $MELANIA, stated in a YouTube interview that “we sniped our own coin to prevent snipers from sniping our own coin.”
Trump Crypto Gains Hit $1 Billion
The Trump family has generated pre-tax gains of around $1 billion over the past year from crypto ventures, including memecoins, stablecoins, and DeFi platforms.
The $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins generated approximately $427 million, while World Liberty Financial token sales fetched around $550 million.
The stablecoin project USD1 raised $2.71 billion from reserves and fees, with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund-backed MGX providing $2 billion in funding to Binance using USD1.
The $4.2 million Meteora airdrop to Trump-linked addresses comes just hours after President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, brewing speculation about potential pardons for other crypto figures facing legal challenges.
CZ’s pardon followed months of efforts to boost the Trump family’s crypto company, with Trump indicating to advisers he was sympathetic to arguments of political persecution.
Some observers now question whether Meteora’s founder could receive similar consideration despite facing RICO charges and fraud allegations.
Chow resigned from Meteora in February 2025 following the $LIBRA controversy, with Jupiter co-founder Meow stating he showed “a lack of judgment and care.”
A leaked video showed Chow expressing shock about Davis’ misconduct, stating, “I feel so sick, because I gave him Melania. I fucked up because I enabled the guy that should not have been enabled.”
The lawsuit alleges Kelsier Labs secretly agreed to invest approximately $2 million in Meteora’s operations as a pay-to-play buy-in, with whistleblower communications confirming that Davis acted under Chow’s instructions on more than 15 token launches.
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