Trump family-linked financial group probed by congressional committee over Chinese stock scams

A Republican-led congressional committee has demanded information from a financial firm linked to the Trump family about its role facilitating the US IPOs of Chinese stocks implicated in pump-and-dump schemes.

Dominari Securities, whose parent company counts Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump as members of its advisory board, is one of three US underwriters of initial public offerings that were sent letters on Sunday by the House committee on China, headed by Republican Congress member John Moolenaar.

The bipartisan letters said Dominari Securities, Revere Securities and D Boral Capital had underwritten the US IPOs of Chinese small-cap companies that were then involved in stock manipulation schemes orchestrated by “organised crime networks” in China and nations “aligned” with the Chinese communist party.

“These scam centers defraud American households through coordinated ‘ramp-and-dump’ stock manipulation schemes involving Chinese shell companies listed on American exchanges, which your firm appears to facilitate,” Moolenaar and the committee’s ranking member, the Democrat Ro Khanna, said in each of the three letters.

Dominari Securities, a brokerage firm based a few floors below the Trump Organization in New York’s Trump Tower, is owned by Dominari Holdings, in which the US President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump is the fourth-largest shareholder. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr joined the company’s advisory board in December 2024.

Kyle Wool, Dominari president, previously worked at Revere. Last year, Wool told the FT he was introduced to the Trump brothers through charity events at Long Island golf clubs.

Dominari said it had received the letter and would respond “in due course”. Revere, D Boral, the Trump Organization and Wool did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The committee’s inquiries mark an escalation of efforts by lawmakers and regulators to clamp down on suspected “pump and dump” or “ramp and dump” scams, in which people artificially inflate a company’s share price in order to profit by abruptly selling their own shares. These scams have proliferated on US capital markets in recent years.

“The scale of this CCP-enabled fraud is staggering,” Moolenaar and Khanna said. Dominari, Revere and D Boral have been given until this Friday to provide information regarding their work on the IPOs of potentially manipulated Chinese stocks.

The letters come after the Securities and Exchange Commission in September launched a task force to take aim at US-based “gatekeepers, particularly auditors and underwriters” that facilitate “potential securities law violations related to companies from foreign jurisdictions such as China”.

Last summer, the FBI said it had seen a 300 per cent year-on-year increase in victim complaints “referencing ramp and dump stock fraud”. The FT previously reported that investors had lost billions of dollars betting on small US-listed Chinese stocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily promoted on social media.

“Public SEC filings identify Dominari as an underwriter for Chinese issuers later associated with suspected manipulation . . . several of which have been subject to SEC trading suspensions or experienced price collapses exceeding 80 per cent,” the letter to Dominari said.

The Department of Justice had secured criminal indictments against 10 individuals linked to China and seized more than $214mn in fraudulent proceeds, the letters added.

Dominari Securities and Revere are also acting as advisers to golf club operator Aureus Greenway Holdings, which on Monday announced plans to merge with a drone company that does business with the Pentagon.

Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump are described by AGH as “notable investors” in the deal.

In 2024, D Boral Capital — then named EF Hutton — helped the Trump family media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, go public via a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp.