Alex Dovnya
Fraudsters' movements are monitored by blockchain detectives
Read U.TODAY
google news
Earlier today, an extremely unlucky trader fell victim to an address poisoning scam and lost $68 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC).Most of these funds have already been converted to Ethereum, according to cryptocurrency tracking and compliance platform MistTrack.
$68 million mistake
Address poisoning fraud involves creating a fake address that closely resembles a real address.
For this fraudulent scheme to work, potential victims must be careless by copying and pasting the wrong address to perform the transaction. Therefore, users should always double-check their addresses (especially if the address was copied and pasted from transaction history). At the same time, suspicious transactions should simply be ignored.
However, the trader in question did not follow these advice; Lose You can earn a lot of money with just a few fateful clicks.
In this case, the fake address contained the same six characters at the beginning and end.
Focus on stolen funds
According to the blockchain researcher's officer's note, there is no functionality in the wBTC issuer's code to freeze these funds, which means the funds are likely to be lost forever.
But now that these funds have been converted to Ethereum, it's not clear how anyone would try to launder these funds, given that their movements will be scrutinized by countless blockchain sleuths. . “This is a huge amount of money and you'll probably get caught. Every move you make now is being watched by just about everyone,” Misttrack said.
Misttrack suggests that fraudsters should consider returning the funds, as it is highly unlikely that they will spend the entire amount without getting caught.
About the author
Alex Dovnya
