Ripple CTO Shares Hilarious Email from Jed McCaleb Impersonator

Ripple CTO David Schwartz has taken X to share a hilarious phishing email that was targeting him personally by impersonating Jed McCaleb, a co-founder of Ripple who left the company in 2014 to start Stellar. 

Schwartz posted a screenshot of the fraudulent email with the caption “Seriously?!”.

The scammer pretended to be Jed McCaleb, leveraging his real identity and past ties to Ripple. 

The email demanded $1 million in USDT on the Ethereum blockchain. The specific Ethereum address mentioned shows no prior activity. It’s likely a freshly generated wallet created solely for this scam. 

Why is it absurd

McCaleb is a billionaire from selling billions of XRP over the years. Hence, the probability of him begging for $1 million is virtually zero. 

As one of the original co-founders of Ripple (along with Chris Larsen and others), he received a massive allocation of XRP tokens as part of the company’s early structure. 

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From 2014 to 2022, McCaleb methodically sold nearly all of his 9 billion XRP under this schedule. Estimates vary slightly by source and timing, but he realized around $3-3.5 billion in total proceeds from these sales. 

Forbes and other reliable sources peg McCaleb’s net worth at approximately $2.9 billion. 

Scammers targeting Schwartz

Schwartz has been targeted by numerous crypto-related scams and phishing attempts over the years due to his high-profile role in the XRP/Ripple ecosystem. 

In August, for instance, he shared a hilariously poorly spelled phishing email pretending to be from X/Twitter support, joking about needing to change his “password.”

In January, he posted a fake Coinbase support email urging account updates. 

In May 2024, Schwartz revealed that he had fallen for the initial stages of a sophisticated Apple ID phishing scam, but spotted it before any damage. 

As reported by U.Today, Ripple recently launched a new holiday anti-scam campaign.