Two of US President Donald Trump’s partners from his World Liberty Financial (WLFI) crypto venture have been accused of abandoning investors from a previous Decentralized Finance (DeFi) project, which suffered a $2.5 million exploit nearly a year ago.
Dough Finance, co-founded by Herro and Folkman, was an open-source protocol to create non-custodial liquidity markets. Last year, the project suffered a flash loan attack that took over $2.55 million in USDC and Ethereum (ETH).
By late July, only 76.2 ETH of the misappropriated crypto assets, worth around $281,000, had been recovered by cybersecurity firm SEAL 911 and promised to be distributed to crypto investors.
However, despite distributing around $180,000 worth of ETH from the project’s official wallet to 134 addresses in September, several investors reportedly told Reuters they haven’t received such a payment.
But two months after the protocol’s collapse, Dough Finance’s co-founders seemingly abandoned their customers to launch their new crypto project, WLFI, alongside President Trump, and his three sons, Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron.
Nonetheless, the DeFi protocol co-founders, seemingly known for frequently posting online, reportedly stopped updating the project’s Telegram and X accounts after August 18 and deleted another Telegram group.
Additionally, the Dough Finance website has been shut down, and the project only has a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $1,689, according to DeFiLlama data.
Ten victims also spoke to the news media outlet on condition of anonymity, with one user affirming they last heard from Dough Finance four months ago, on January 13, when they promised to “have a solution this week,” but never received any compensation.
