Whale Loses Massive USDT Stash in Archaic Scam Trick

Crypto scams are common, and while new ones are emerging, some very old ones are still being used. A crypto whale has lost $50 million in USDT to scammers who pulled one of the oldest tricks on him, raising many eyebrows.

Information shared shows that the whale was scammed using address poisoning, a scam method that many say is outdated and should not be effective in stealing funds from the victim. The victim is said to have withdrawn the USDT from Binance shortly before the attack.

An Ancient Trick That Still Works

Address poisoning is a method of stealing crypto assets that involves tricking a crypto user to send funds to an address other than the one they intended. This trick is accomplished by the scammer sending a tiny amount of crypto to the victim, thus having their address registered in the victim’s transaction history.

The small crypto amount is sent from a wallet address generated to look extremely similar to one that the victim frequently interacts with, so they can send funds to it next time if they don’t properly check. The scammer is said to have “poisoned” the victim’s transaction history in the process.

This is an old trick that was prevalent during the early crypto days. The victim first sent $50, probably as a test to see if it was the right address. The scammer who seems to have monitored him closely then sent him a tiny amount of USDT with a very similar address to the one he tested, which he copied and sent the $50 million to.

Other more modern tactics for stealing crypto now exist, such as fake chrome extensions posing as legitimate crypto wallets. The wallets are used to steal seed phrases which grant the scammer access to funds.

A Call to Caution to Avoid Address Poisoning

Most crypto users are quite lazy when it comes to doing due diligence when carrying out transactions. Address poisoning preys on this laziness to get them to send funds to the wrong addresses when they simply copy from their transaction history.

To avoid this, it is advisable to not copy wallet addresses directly from the transaction history. Instead, it is better to copy from the source where the address was first shared every single time. Whitelisting of addresses is also another method that is effective against ensuring that funds are never sent to another address, no matter how similar it looks. 

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