Crypto user loses $50 million in 'address poisoning' scam😟
The scammer sent a small "dust" amount to the victim's transaction history, causing the victim to copy the address and send $50M to the scammer's address.🙂
What to know👇🏻
A crypto user lost $50 million in USDT after falling for an "address poisoning" scam, where a scammer created a wallet address that closely resembled the intended destination address.
The scammer sent a small "dust" amount to the victim's transaction history, causing the victim to copy the address and send $49,999,950 USDT to the scammer's address.
The victim has published an onchain message demanding the return of 98% of the stolen funds within 48 hours, offering a $1 million white-hat bounty, and threatening legal escalation and criminal charges if the funds are not returned.
A crypto user lost $50 million in USDT after falling for an address poisoning scam in a massive onchain exploit.
The theft, spotted by Web3 security firm Web3 Antivirus, occurred after the user sent a $50 test transaction to confirm the destination address before transferring the rest of the funds.
How to lose $50M in under an hour. This is one of the largest on-chain scam losses we’ve seen recently.
A single victim lost $50M in $USDT to an address poisoning scam. The funds had arrived less than 1h earlier.
Blockchain data shows the stolen funds were then swapped for ether
ETH
$2,978.53
and moved across multiple wallets. Several addresses involved have since interacted with Tornado Cash, a sanctioned crypto mixer, in a bid to obfuscate the transaction trail.
In response, the victim published an onchain message demanding the return of 98% of the stolen funds within 48 hours. The message, backed with legal threats, offered the attacker $1 million as a white-hat bounty if the assets are returned in full.
Failure to comply, the message warns, will trigger legal escalation and criminal charges.
