Earlier today, an extremely unlucky trader fell victim to an address poisoning scam, losing a whopping $68 million in wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC). Most of these funds have already been converted to Ethereum, according to cryptocurrency tracking and compliance platform MistTrack.
Earlier today, an extremely unlucky trader fell victim to an address poisoning scam, losing a whopping $68 million in wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC). Most of these funds have already been converted to Ethereum, according to cryptocurrency tracking and compliance platform MistTrack.
A $68 million mistake
The address poisoning scam involves creating a fake address that is very similar to the real one.
For this fraudulent scheme to work, a potential victim must be careless enough to copy and paste the wrong address to make their transaction. Therefore, users are always supposed to verify their addresses (especially if they copy and paste them from transaction history). At the same time, suspicious transactions should simply be ignored.
However, the merchant in question did not follow this advice, losing an entire fortune thanks to a few fateful clicks.
In this case, the fake address had the same six characters at the beginning and end.
All eyes on stolen funds
According to the blockchain researcher’s Official Notes, there is no function in the wBTC issuer’s code to freeze these funds, meaning they will likely be lost forever.
However, now that these funds have been converted to Ethereum, it is unclear how anyone is going to launder these funds considering their movements will be scrutinized by countless blockchain sleuths. “This is a huge amount and you will most likely get caught. You pretty much have everyone watching every move you make right now,” MistTrack said.
MistTrack has suggested that the scammer should consider returning the funds, as it is highly unlikely that they will be able to spend them all without being caught.
