Social media users are being warned about crypto scams involving high-profile right-wing figures, including Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, according to a new report from Open Measures.
Bongino, one of the site's earliest financial backers, has become a prime target for scammers on Rumble, thanks to his popularity with the site's right-wing audience.
The former law enforcement officer's name is now being used by scammers to promote fake cryptocurrency groups on Telegram.
Individuals behind crypto projects often use the app to communicate because there is minimal content moderation and it's relatively easy to stay anonymous.
These shady users post comments on Rumble videos with the Telegram links either pretending to be the actual Bongino or lying and saying they know him, per the report.
Many of the URLs contained phrases such as 'Contact_DanBongino' and 'DanBonginoo.'
Open Research found that from November 2022 to November 2025, Telegram links were contained in more than 1.3 million Rumble comments.
More than two-thirds of those comments were posted between June 2024 and February 2025, and during that period, a staggering 8 percent of all comments on the platform had Telegram links.
Scammers who commented shady Telegram links on the right-wing video site Rumble most frequently used Dan Bongino's name, according to a report from Open Measures.
Bongino, an investor in Rumble and now the number two at the FBI, hosted a podcast on the platform for years. It's unclear what precisely the scammers' aims were, but they were possibly trying to get people to invest in shady crypto projects or other financial instruments.
Telegram URLs referencing Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the Trump family were the next most common used by the scammers. The Trump family is heavily involved in crypto.
There were 1,896 unique URLs that appeared in 100 or more comments each, so the Open Research team spent more time extracting data on them.
Of that total, 267 URLs impersonated Bongino, who joined the Trump administration in February, and they appeared in over 184,000 Rumble comments, according to the report.
The Daily Mail approached the FBI for comment.
URLs referencing Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the Trump family were seen in more than 36,000 comments, while the links namedropping the Tate brothers and Russell Brand appeared in 18,000 comments each.
All the others referenced in the links are conservatives or have some affiliation with President Donald Trump or his administration, however loose those ties may be.
They include conservative media personalities Tucker Carlson and Benny Johnson, as well as far-right political operative Steve Bannon.
It's unknown what precisely was waiting for people in the Telegram groups they joined by clicking these links, but given that many of the other URLs studied by OpenResearch were explicitly about crypto, it's possible scammers were trying to lure people into financial investments.
It's also likely the case that these scammers used Bongino, Trump Jr., Andrew Tate and others because they have been known to either promote crypto or have their own crypto-related projects or investment deals.
Trump himself has multiple crypto ventures, including his own meme coin which is down 87 percent from its all-time high on January 19, a day before his second inauguration.