Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher
Last month, just hours before heading to a state dinner with King Charles III, Eric Trump, Donald Trump’s second son, posted a five-paragraph defense on X. The trigger was a controversy surrounding his involvement: he had long told investors that the publicly traded cryptocurrency company he helped run, “American Bitcoin,” could mine bitcoin at roughly half the market price—a claim exposed by a Forbes report.
As of June 17, 2026, the stock price of American Bitcoin (Nasdaq ticker ABTC) has fallen to approximately $0.83, a decline of about 90% from its year-end high of around $175 and its initial public offering price of $14.
Then, Eric shifted focus in his post to another long-buried matter weighing on him for nearly a decade: the 2017 Forbes investigation into the children’s cancer charity he founded. He wrote that the external attacks were “like madness,” as he had simply been a young man “fully devoted to saving dying children.”
Undeniably, he has made charitable contributions; over the years, this foundation has donated more than $25 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee, operated efficiently with a singular focus on fundraising and delegated operational tasks to others. But its other side features misleading rhetoric, sloppy accounting, a board riddled with conflicts of interest, and unapologetic loyalty to Trump—tactics also prevalent in the cryptocurrency industry.
The Trump family always manages to emerge unscathed from scandals.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Forbes obtained thousands of pages of documents revealing that, between 2011 and 2016, his foundation routed at least $500,000 in charitable funds to family businesses through a series of transactions, most of which never appeared on tax filings.
These documents also explain why the Trump family always manages to escape unscathed. Their pattern is this: first, they loudly counterattack on TV or social media; then, they use lawyers to bury paper trails under layers of obfuscation; next, they tweak their practices just enough to satisfy regulators and avoid penalties, while fundamentally changing nothing; once the spotlight fades, they reappear confidently as victims, asking the public for another chance at trust—and there are always plenty willing to believe them.
Eric’s foundation has faithfully followed this script from start to finish: nine years after the scandal, the renamed organization is still operating, with fundraising growing each year, annual expenditures exceeding $500,000, and nearly all events held at venues under Trump’s name.
The conflict of interest is obvious, even involving the White House.
The foundation’s origins were indeed well-intentioned. Initially, Eric and his wealthy friends wanted to do something good; in 2007, when filing with the IRS, they wrote: “Our family has access to three golf courses in New York and New Jersey.” The application also pledged not to enter into any lease agreements with companies managed by its leaders. For the first three years, this was upheld, with annual spending of approximately $50,000 and fundraising reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, starting in 2010, employees of the Trump Organization gradually joined the board, and the following year, expenses surged to $142,000. Former club manager Ian Gillule, in an interview, directly blamed Donald Trump himself: in the early years, the foundation used the facilities free of charge, and bills often vanished without explanation. Trump was dissatisfied—not with the free assistance, but with the fact that such substantial donations left no paper trail or public recognition. He subsequently ordered that everyone, including his own sons, be charged regardless.
Everyone was charged. After the 2011 event, Trump National Golf Club issued a $20,000 invoice to the foundation; a copy obtained by Forbes included a note: “For questions, please call Dan Scavino.” The conflict of interest was clear: Dan Scavino, now White House Deputy Chief of Staff, was at the time both the club’s general manager and a foundation board member; beneath the invoice was Eric’s own signature, though it’s unclear which capacity he signed in. The invoices continued annually: the club charged $100,000 in 2013 and $99,000 in 2016, and even Trump SoHo restaurant and Mar-a-Lago joined in.
Poisonous candy is wrapped in attractive sugar coating.
"Dear friends," Eric wrote in the 2014 fundraising event brochure, noting that the foundation "has one of the lowest fee rates in the world," and insists on using only Trump-owned venues, full-time volunteers, donated meals, and celebrity performances without compensation, so that St. Jude receives nearly all of the proceeds.
But the books don’t match this narrative. The gala featured Hooters waitresses and mini Eric nodding dolls, and most performers were celebrities from The Celebrity Apprentice—“they all performed for free,” Eric claimed, yet his personally signed checks for performance fees exceeded $90,000. The auction items were said to be “all donated,” but in reality, the foundation spent at least $65,000 purchasing them; in 2012 alone, it paid $6,040 for an item that ultimately sold for just $3,310. Luxury transportation was also a cost, with Sunny’s alone receiving over $35,000.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations went to other charitable organizations, some of which had more direct ties to the family’s interests than to childhood cancer; at least three of them also held fundraising events at Trump’s golf courses. In 2013, Eric spent $1,600 from the foundation to purchase a decorative copper still and an antique bottle washer near the family’s winery. Of course, the foundation did make substantial donations to St. Jude, increasing from $220,000 in 2007 to $2.9 million in 2016, when Trump was first elected.
Eric became a victim and felt that his good intentions went unrewarded.
Politics quickly thrust the foundation into the spotlight. By the end of 2016, Daily Beast, in collaboration with the Associated Press, exposed its transactions with the Trump Club, and The New York Times reported that an investment manager had bid nearly $60,000 at a fundraising auction just for a coffee with Ivanka Trump. The issue went beyond public relations: under New York State law and federal law, such related-party transactions were required to be approved by the board, documented, and disclosed on tax filings.
So Eric decided to restructure and distance himself from the family: all Trump Organization employees, including himself, stepped down; he said that during his father’s term, he aimed to avoid “perception issues” and would no longer personally fundraise before leaving office, and the foundation was renamed Curetivity, pledging that all donations would go to St. Jude. On the surface, it seemed like a return to its original mission, but Eric still stood by his statement: a month after the board meeting, he told Forbes, “We are using the world’s top venues completely free of charge—that’s precisely why we have the lowest fee rate in history.”
On the day the report was published, he appeared on Fox News, portraying the scrutiny from all sides as a political conspiracy and persecution, casting himself as a victim: “I raised tens of millions of dollars, and all I got in return was hatred.”
Two days later, the Attorney General’s office sent a letter requesting access to the financial records. The investigation severely weakened the foundation: donations in 2017 plummeted by more than two-thirds, falling below $1 million, while administrative and legal expenses surged from nearly zero to approximately $50,000 per year. By year-end, the Attorney General sent another letter citing multiple issues—including financial statements not in compliance with accounting standards, disregard of related-party transaction regulations, and misleading marketing—and threatened to revoke the foundation’s fundraising authorization.
Afterward, the accounting became increasingly opaque. After Eric stepped down from the board, the previously occasional notation of “related-party transactions” disappeared, the “rent/space fee” line was consistently left blank, and fundraising expenditures dropped from $384,000 in 2016 to $111,000 in 2017. Until the end of 2018, when the Attorney General’s office informed them that the investigation had shifted from enforcement to compliance, Eric reappeared in promotional materials and was eventually labeled as a “founder” of Curetivity, causing fundraising expenditures to rebound and reach a new high of $392,000 in 2019. How much of it flowed back to the Trump Organization remains unknown under the opaque accounting.
Fundraising events continue to be held under Trump’s name: one in 2020 at Mar-a-Lago, costing $309,000, and more recently at Trump’s golf courses in North Carolina and Jupiter, Florida. If the fees remain comparable to those from back then, Curetivity alone could bring in approximately $200,000 annually to Trump’s business empire, totaling over a million dollars over 20 years.
The same script has been moved to the crypto industry.
This tactic of “pretty talk and value flowing back to insiders” hasn’t stopped at the charity foundation—it has now been moved almost unchanged into American Bitcoin.
Previously, Eric portrayed the company as a "money-printing machine," publicly claiming it could mine Bitcoin at a 53% discount below spot price, with a cost of approximately $57,000 per Bitcoin. This sounded identical to the foundation's claim of "the lowest fees globally." But, like the charity foundation, the books didn’t add up once they were opened.
The same Forbes journalist, Dan Alexander, who exposed the foundation nine years ago, led this investigation. He found that approximately 70% of the company’s Bitcoin was not mined, but rather acquired through continuous share issuances and subsequent purchases on the open market. When accounting for depreciation and overhead, the all-in cost per Bitcoin approaches $90,000—far higher than the $57,000 Eric publicly claimed.
The company’s stock has plunged by about 90% from its late-2025 high of approximately $175 and its $14 offering price, resulting in an estimated cumulative loss of $500 million for retail investors; financially, the company has been bleeding heavily, reporting a net loss of approximately $81.8 million in the first quarter of 2026, while insiders have experienced a very different situation.
The founder originally acquired his shares at nearly zero cost; even after the stock price plummeted by 90%, Eric’s personal stake was still worth approximately $70 million. During the same period, his net worth was estimated to have risen to around $300 million. Even the aftermath followed a familiar script: faced with scrutiny, Eric did not directly address Forbes’ calculations regarding cost and dilution, but instead countered with impressive metrics such as quarterly revenue growth and holding over 7,000 coins. On X, he harshly criticized Forbes for having become a political weapon and a disgrace to journalism.
Last September, Eric stood at the center of the威郡 Club party, hosting Curetivity’s 19th fundraising event, surrounded by several key business partners. Since his father’s re-election, his net worth has surged from an estimated $40 million in 2024 to $300 million today.