The Daily Fuckup

Federal prosecutors in New York say two North Macedonian nationals were charged in separate indictments over a scheme built around fake ‘Trump Bucks’ — a bogus form of legal tender that investigators say was sold to victims across the United States. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Wednesday, May 13, 2026, that Goran Spiridonov and Kristina Janeva were charged in connection with the operation and remain at large.

According to the Justice Department, the alleged scheme ran from at least 2023 through the present. Prosecutors say the defendants and others abroad marketed products including Trump Bucks, Golden Checks, Membership Booklets, Golden Badges, Trump Dollars, Trump Checks, Golden Trump Checks and Diamond Bucks through an online marketplace and encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram. The government says the items were worthless, not redeemable at banks, and had no real affiliation with Donald Trump, his family, the Trump Organization, the Trump administration or any campaign.

The charging papers say the pitch leaned on false claims that purchases would help fund Trump’s reelection campaign and other causes associated with Trump, while also suggesting the products were loaded with large sums of cash that could be exchanged during a Trump presidency. Prosecutors say some of the targets were senior citizens and that the scheme has pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The case is another reminder that Trump’s name remains useful to people trying to sell nonsense, but the only hard facts here are in the indictments: the products were allegedly fake, the claims were allegedly false, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.