A week ago, a crypto whale fell victim to a scam that resulted in the loss of more than $71 million. In the following days, the fraudster transferred the funds to block them. But in a shocking turn of events, they returned the money to the victim.
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Poisoning scam title extracts $71 million
On May 3, whale 0x1E22…8FD5 lost 1,155 wrapped bitcoins (WBTC), worth about $71.31 million, after falling victim to an address poisoning scam. This scam, also known as address spoofing, consists of trying to trick users into sending money to similar fraudulent accounts.
#PeckShieldAlert #phishing Whale 0x1E22…8FD5 lost ~1,155 $WBTC (worth ~$71 million) after falling victim to treatment poisoning.
The scammer has swapped the stolen items $WBTC For about 23 thousand $ Ethereum & move them pic.twitter.com/dr7eTYQkAX– Peak Shield Alert (@peakShieldAlert) May 3, 2024
Custom Addresses are specially designed using specific characters that resemble the address of the intended recipient. Scammers send worthless transactions, hoping that the similarity between addresses will fool the user under attack.
If successful, victims copy the fraudulent address from previous transactions and mistakenly send their assets to the scammers instead.
PeckShieldAlert reported that the scammer immediately exchanged the stolen WBTC for 23,000 Ethereum (ETH) before transferring it to a different address. Throughout the following days, the crook Washed financial resources. Sending them to ten different addresses before distributing the tokens across more than 100 other addresses.
This development painted a looming picture for the cryptocurrency whale. At this point, the money appeared to be unrecoverable. 1 user Named The huge number of transfers in the game of “crypto-musical chairs”.
Others justified the fraudster, claim He didn't steal the money, he “just received it.” This position ignores the nature of the deal. The transfer occurs on the belief that the funds are being safely transferred to the intended account and not to a similar account.
Furthermore, a similar address is present in the victim's transaction history, clearly intended to trick the user into receiving funds not intended for them.
Change your mind or fear of the cryptocurrency community?
In a shocking turn of events, the scammer sent 51 Ethereum, worth about $153,000, to the victim on Thursday. Along with the money, the scammer sent a message asking to contact the whale, and appears to be looking to negotiate.
The reasons behind the sudden change of heart remain a mystery to society. Many people jokingly wonder why the scammer would return the money. One X user playfully Proposal That the scammer is afraid of being investigated by cryptocurrency investigator ZachXBT.
Others claimed that “even a scammer doesn’t want ETH,” referring to the criticism the second-largest cryptocurrency has faced following its performance this cycle.
In the early hours of Friday, PeckShieldAlert open 2,683.7 Ethereum, worth about $8 million, has already been transferred to the whale from about 50 different addresses. A few hours later, an update showed that about 50% of the total funds had been returned, representing 11,446.87 ETH, or $34.7 million.
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It may take time to recover all assets due to the large number of addresses holding funds. At the time of writing, over $45 million worth of ETH has already been returned, and transactions are still ongoing.
Ether (ETH) is trading at $3,035.8 in the three-day chart. Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com