Right-wing influencers are shilling an app that purportedly lets individuals earn crypto for reporting sightings of undocumented immigrants. ICERAID, a “GovFi protocol that delegates intelligence gathering duties to residents,” has not too long ago been promoted by the likes of conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, Proud Boy-turned-media character Jacob Engels, and disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
“It’s like a citizen’s arrest, however with Wi-Fi,” Gaetz stated on a current episode of his One America News Network present. “Forget driving Uber or DoorDash for additional change. Snap a pic, save the day, and stack some digital money when you’re doing it.”
ICERAID’s web site describes it as a “GovFi” — authorities finance, a time period coined by ICERAID founder Jason Meyers — protocol on Solana that “rewards residents for capturing and importing pictures of prison unlawful alien exercise.” (To be clear, ICERAID has no connection to the federal government.) And ICERAID isn’t simply soliciting pictures of suspected immigrants. “You can snap an image of somebody committing animal cruelty or murder, kidnapping, terrorism — you see somebody scraping a Tesla, that’s home terrorism,” Meyers stated on an April 4th livestream. ICERAID then “provides” this information to legislation enforcement, in accordance with Meyers.
Despite these lofty ambitions, the ICERAID app (which is definitely an internet kind accessed by way of a crypto pockets) seems to be little greater than promotion of a not too long ago launched meme coin of the identical title — and a few early traders tried to get their a refund earlier than the coin even launched.
Meyers — who was accused of misappropriating funds at an earlier office — instructed The Verge that ICERAID was launched in January. ICERAID introduced a “bounty” for “suspicious unlawful alien exercise” in New York City the next month. But the coin ostensibly used to pay out rewards to individuals who ship in suggestions by way of the app didn’t drop till April. To entry the reporting system, it’s a must to obtain Phantom, a crypto pockets that carries Solana-based tokens. ICERAID then provides a kind the place you’ll be able to add pictures of alleged crimes-in-progress: unlawful immigration, drug trafficking, kidnapping, “theft/larson,” housebreaking, murder, terrorism, animal cruelty, and obstruction of justice. You’re requested whether or not you witnessed the exercise within the picture and acknowledge the placement or suspects, and that’s all.
In an interview with Gaetz, Meyers stated he’s “speaking to sure individuals at DHS, native legislation enforcement, DEA, and varied different police departments” in regards to the app. “We use blockchain to crowdsource legislation enforcement and prison and unlawful actions,” Meyers stated. “You add a photograph — which it’s a must to tackle location — and also you receives a commission for every picture you add.”
On ICERAID’s Telegram channel, Meyers clarified that the app provides “API entry” to legislation enforcement. “They in the end determine if they need to reply to the info,” Meyers stated in an emailed assertion to The Verge. “The purpose is cooperation, not official partnerships.”
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) already has a tipline, as does US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the company that oversees authorized immigration. ICE additionally has dozens of official partnerships with legislation enforcement businesses throughout the nation.
Even if legislation enforcement businesses are accessing ICERAID’s information, it’s unlikely they’ll get something helpful out of it. ICERAID’s incident tracker solely exhibits six entries as of April sixteenth, 5 of which have been rejected by ICERAID’s moderators. Per week earlier, the map confirmed 13 entries, simply three of which had been permitted. The three non-rejected entries had been a JD Vance meme, a photograph of Elon Musk handing a $1 million examine to a Republican voter in Wisconsin, and a photograph of Óscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador who was assassinated by a right-wing demise squad in 1980 over his opposition to the Salvadoran army authorities. The Vance and Musk “sightings” have since disappeared, however the image of Romero stays on ICERAID’s map.
Meyers stated by way of e mail that ICERAID has obtained “a whole lot” of suggestions, most of which had been “mechanically eliminated as a result of they’re decided to be unreliable.” Meyers stated ICERAID makes use of AI to “elevate the reliability of the proof by way of location verification, gender and age in addition to sentiment evaluation (completely happy, unhappy, indignant, and so forth).” When requested for specifics on ICERAID’s AI, Meyers stated the AI “is skilled” and “a really restricted quantity of proof makes it by way of validation.”
The app additionally claims to have a “sponsorship program” for “arduous working undocumented immigrant[s] with no prison historical past.” It claims to supply “a big reward” for individuals who pursue “a authorized standing within the United States by way of self reporting” on the ICERAID app. Given that it’s almost unattainable for many undocumented immigrants to use for citizenship or in any other case modify their standing, it’s unclear what sort of “authorized standing” undocumented immigrants can be pursuing by way of ICERAID. Meyers’ reply was obscure. “We have a community of service suppliers and consultants that take care of these points and are keen to supply assistance on a confidential foundation,” Meyers stated.
It’s additionally not clear whether or not anybody is earning money for the photographs they’re importing. Meyers stopped responding to The Verge’s emails when requested about earlier accusations that he’d misappropriated traders’ funds, and he didn’t reply to follow-up questions on whether or not and the way a lot individuals who use the app are getting paid. ICERAID’s large pitch is that it pays individuals for photographs of “unlawful immigration” and different crimes. There’s no indication that truly occurs.
And how a lot cash is altering arms by way of crypto gross sales? ICERAID had a token presale in February, throughout which it claims to have bought “65,007,513 ICERAID tokens.” The coin, presently valued at $0.002026 per token, has simply 82 holders as of April sixteenth.
In the weeks main as much as the ICERAID token launch — which was pushed again a number of instances — Meyers spent a substantial period of time within the ICERAID Telegram channel alternating between posting “stunning” photos of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and reassuring individuals who requested him to refund their presale tokens. Other moderators on the channel urged the skeptics to “belief the method.”
After one consumer requested Meyers for an official launch date, Meyers responded, “STOP TERRORIZING US OR YOU’LL GET DEPORTED!”
ICERAID isn’t Meyers’ first crypto challenge. He can also be the founding father of AuditChain Labs, the mum or dad firm that develops each ICERAID and Pacioli.ai, Meyer’s “RegFi” or “regulatory finance” firm. He additionally has an extended — and legally contentious — historical past within the monetary world. In 2014, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) completely banned Meyers from broker-dealer actions, in accordance with the crypto web site The Rage. FINRA’s dealer database claims that Meyers misappropriated “at the very least $700,000 of funds raised from 19 traders in a sequence of personal choices of securities” between 2006 and 2011. According to FINRA, Meyers took “important parts of the funds raised for his personal private use.” (He neither admitted nor denied the findings).
On Telegram, some early traders expressed frustration with what they described as a perpetually delayed launch of the coin. After one consumer requested Meyers for an official launch date, Meyers responded, “STOP TERRORIZING US OR YOU’LL GET DEPORTED!” Some members of the Telegram channel appeared to imagine that the coin was launching on March twenty fifth. Six days later, Meyers introduced that he was pushing the rollout once more attributable to “important resistance” from the general public that required him to implement “all doable safety measures to safeguard our platform and neighborhood throughout what can solely be thought-about adversarial wartime circumstances.”
When requested what these threats had been, Meyers instructed The Verge that “further precautions had been taken in anticipation of threats, which haven’t materialized,” however he didn’t make clear what the threats had been. “There was by no means a proper launch date,” Meyers stated by way of e mail.
“We are all able to launch,” Meyers wrote in ICERAID’s Telegram channel three days later, on April third. “The query is can we wish to launch as we speak with market circumstances the way in which they’re.” The Dow dropped 2,200 factors in a single day in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. ICERAID launched the next day.
“We are actually attempting to have a completely easy launch on this, as a result of we’re going to get such excessive visibility with the US authorities entities and different legislation enforcement teams,” Thomas Herlihy, a crypto character whose present DYOR Live! hosted the ICERAID launch announcement, stated through the livestream. (Herlihy additionally goes by “Striking Balls.”) “We don’t need it to be seen as a typical crypto challenge that super-pumps after which doesn’t pump anymore, after which individuals take their cash and go away.”
Via e mail, Meyers emphasised (underlining and bolding the phrase “emphasised”) that “the purpose of the app is NOT to ‘pump’ the coin. The level of the app is to experiment, show and talk the technical, financial, and social principals of ‘GovFi,’ which can take time.” He was far much less restrained within the Telegram channel, at one level claiming the coin would go to $3 billion. Still, Meyers instructed potential traders that ICERAID was greater than a memecoin. “We are going to make an trustworthy lady out of Solana,” Meyers wrote on Telegram.
Even if ICERAID finally ends up being little greater than a pump-and-dump scheme, a few of its current boosters have an outsized quantity of energy in Washington. On ICERAID’s Telegram account, Meyers bragged about assembly with Tether founder Brock Pierce. Pierce, a child-star-turned-crypto-mogul, hosted a DOGE appreciation get together at his Capitol Hill condominium that coincided with the top of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Loomer — who promoted the challenge to her 1.6 million followers on X — has a lot sway over Trump that the president reportedly fired a number of National Security Council staffers after she urged they had been insufficiently loyal.
Notwithstanding ICERAID’s clunky interface and the obvious dearth of suggestions it’s obtained up to now, the advertising push round it signifies a broader right-wing need to show on a regular basis individuals into immigrant-hunting vigilantes. In January, a Mississippi state consultant launched a invoice that might have awarded licensed bounty hunters with $1,000 for apprehending immigrants who had been within the state with out authorization. An identical invoice was launched within the Missouri state Senate. That laws would have created a fund for bounty hunters and others who turned over info ensuing within the arrest of undocumented immigrants. Neither invoice grew to become a legislation.
David Gregory, the Missouri state senator who sponsored the invoice, disagreed with reporters’ characterization of the invoice. “I’m listening to issues like, ‘oh, this locations a bounty on individuals.’ No, it doesn’t,” he instructed CNN. “Just as a result of we’re dispatching bounty hunters after a warrant has been issued isn’t a bounty. It’s truly a reward system by way of a hotline.”
ICERAID, alternatively, has no downside with the phrase “bounty.” But the monetary incentives it claims to supply are depending on a meme coin that, as of this writing, isn’t price a lot in any respect.
