Trader loses $ 129 million due to erroneous crypto wallet transaction

The blockchain security company Scam Sniffer reported that on November 20, an incident occurred that resulted in a cryptocurrency trader losing $ 129 million. However, the stolen funds were unexpectedly returned within a few hours.

It is reported that the fraudster used a fake wallet address «THc…bu8», which was very similar to the real recipient’s address «TMS…bu8». The fake address was identical in the first and last characters, which made it difficult to detect.

Despite a test transaction of $ 100 USDT, the victim did not notice the subtle differences and ended up transferring $ 129 million in cryptocurrency to the wrong address.

Surprisingly, the fraudster returned 90% of the stolen funds — 116.7 million USDT — an hour after the incident and another 12.96 million USDT four hours later.

After receiving the funds back, the victim immediately transferred them to the correct address «TMS…bu8», where they remain to this day.

Scam Sniffer noted that this incident is a classic example of an address poisoning attack that is gaining popularity in the cryptocurrency industry.

This scheme involves creating almost identical wallet addresses that differ by only one or two characters. The fraudsters send small amounts of tokens to embed the fake address in the victim’s transaction history, which leads to errors in future copying and pasting of addresses.

Experts noted that this case emphasizes the growing complexity of cryptophishing and the importance of carefully checking wallet addresses before making transactions.