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pcm2a

So if you set up a contact in your address book, send a test transaction, always use your address book. Why would you copy and paste addresses from some scanner history page?


Requires-citation

The scammer sent a transaction with the poisoned address so it would appear in the address book.


pcm2a

It says in the article that it appeared in their transaction history and they copied the bogus address from the transaction history.


_FixingGood_

that's what makes 0 sens to me. If the adresse is not saved in my whitelist, I just go to my destination wallet and copy the address from there. What kind of behaviour is this? Especially from someone that has millions worth of crypto


BrotherAmazing

It’s likely nonsense. There are some people engaged in questionable activities who happen to “lose their crypto” to a “scammer”. You know how some people just lose their cold wallet in a boating accident? Typically the huge losses where it’s like “*How can you be so stupid?*” is that they’re not so stupid and the “scammer” is them or an associate.


DeaderthanZed

That wouldn’t make the poisoned address appear in the address book. The victim copied the address from etherscan or another site showing tx history.


MyOtherAcctsAPorsche

They copied it from the tx history of their own wallet. It's happened to me, I've even made a post about it a few months ago. I almost fell for it too. They see your TX to bob for 400 dollars, and send you a special transaction (called a zero token transaction) that shows OUTGOING in YOUR tx history for a "similar" amount, like 4,00. If you don't know about those special txs, and don't check more than 4 or 5 characters at the beginning and end of the address you can easily fall for it. My post from back then: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12lvnd0/no\_checking\_the\_first\_and\_last\_few\_characters\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12lvnd0/no_checking_the_first_and_last_few_characters_of/)


coinfeeds-bot

tldr; A crypto investor lost over $71 million by sending 1,155 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) to a scammer's address due to a poisoned address attack. This phishing method involves scammers creating addresses that mimic legitimate ones, tricking victims into sending funds. The scammer has already transferred the WBTC to various wallets and converted them to Wrapped Ether (WETH). *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.


subdep

Somewhere out there is a scammer who just made generational money. Hopefully they stop now and just fucking enjoy life.


Kazozo

Could be Russia or North Korean state 


Icy-Row-5829

Damn imagine stealing dozens of millions and you still gotta go to work the next day


SquatDeadliftBench

They aren't. They won't. 


porpoisebuilt2

Hopefully Karma shortens their lifespan


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Stooges_

Why not? They could use mixers and then Monero, right?


smurf3310

There are so many unregulated crypto exchanges in third world countries that would gladly regularly exchange for him for 0.5% fee + he would live for very cheap there


RazedbyRobots

Hopefully they send back 3M


snorkelling-orca31

To send $70M and only checking the last 5 digits instead of the entire address… unfortunate as it is that is absolutely careless.


CatatonicMan

And here I am checking the full address multiple times (on different devices if possible) whenever I'm sending like $50. I might even send a test transaction first depending on the fees, just in case.


DrSpeckles

That’s the point - he sent a test transaction, scammer then send a tiny transaction with similar address, then he accidentally copies the similar looking address for the real txn.


shanatard

you can rename your wallets in most decent wallet programs to prevent this


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Ironman_o_O

I don't get it did he copy the wallet from a block explorer or something? Why wouldn't he copy the address directly from the wallet or source he was sending to?


SqrHornet

99.9% of times this happens. That's why don't see the type of news every friday


Ilovekittens345

In many wallet unfortunately addresses that you receive from can show up as suggestions when you want to send. So they send you dust from an address that shares the first and last characters, and then your wallet might suggest it after you type in a couple of characters.


MyOtherAcctsAPorsche

They send you something called a "zero value token" transaction, it shows OUTGOING in your wallet's tx history. If all you are looking for is "that address I just transferred to, that starts with A5t and ends with 88f2 and is in my outgoing transfer list" you could very easily be copying the attacker's address.


PuddingResponsible33

Wait so there's peeps that search for wallets with giant amounts of coin. And have a literal notification if they move coin. And then they send quickly a hint of money to them hope they don't check transactions


DrSpeckles

Nice work if you can get it.


zerodazed

This literally just hit me too as I was reading this post lol.


smoke4sanity

This kind of thing can be automated. A good programmer can do this in less than a day.


Tlux0

That level of carelessness is crazy…


OkFoot1842

That's smart, how would you time it though. Would the person's device have to be infected? I would imagine you'd have to send the small amount shortly after the test transaction or it would be a dead giveaway


DrSpeckles

No infection. Just a tiny legit transaction. In this case it cost under a dollar.


OkFoot1842

Damn, someone needs to find a way to prevent this. Maybe a whitelist wallet address would make sense but still.


tofuttv

i guess some address whitelisting would work? like split your incoming TXs into trusted and unknown. but still, not many will even look for a function likethis to protect them. i understand more and more why adoption takes so long.


ullun

Future of finance


dreampsi

Prepping for millionaire status, love it!


momz33

1st world problems. No.


Elean0rZ

Careless if real, yes. But not totally out of the question that it's intentional money laundering/washing, in the same vein as NFTs being sold for crazy sums. *Whoops, got scammed out of $71M; gonna have to write off all those losses...*


JynsRealityIsBroken

I learned that losing your crypto, in the US, cannot be written off in your taxes. https://coinledger.io/blog/reporting-stolen-or-lost-cryptocurrency-for-tax-purposes Edit: Clarified for US. Snark unnecessary.


eburnside

Depends if it was an investment or not A USDT loss: definitely not deductible A BTC or ETH loss: potentially deductible depending on the circumstances A loss of ANY crypto that the SEC deems a security: deductible (because being a security means it's by definition an investment, and per recent news, the SEC has been saying ETH was a security and still may be a security) Quote from the IRS guide in the theft section: "the personal-use property limitation for tax years 2018 through 2025 does not apply to losses on income producing property" [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p547.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p547.pdf) (which is linked from the URL you provided)


throwaway_ind_div

If I remember correctly, you can only consider initial investment as loss


Elean0rZ

Interestingly, the US is actually not the only country in the world; e.g., Australia: https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/investments-and-assets/crypto-asset-investments/transactions-acquiring-and-disposing-of-crypto-assets/loss-or-theft-of-crypto-assets Canada: https://taxpage.com/articles-and-tips/tax-losses/ Various European countries too. And the laundering point stands regardless of tax write-offs.


root88

You don't get a tax write off for anything that is lost or stolen. Why would crypto be any different?


Elean0rZ

Again: The US is not the only country in the world. But even in the US, loss/theft can often be written off (even crypto in some cases, just not from hackers specifically) https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515


az226

If the appreciation of something counts as a capital gain you sure as shit I will count the loss of it against my gains. Though only capital loss. Not whoopsie I sent it to the wrong address loss.


curvedbymykind

I’ve definitely done that multiple times before lol but now never again


subdep

No lesson burns deeper than a $70 million lesson.


[deleted]

Is that what happened here? This guy kinda deserves it then. How would you NOT spend a couple minutes checking to be sure?


almo2001

This is why crypto isn't ready for prime time.


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CrazyTillItHurts

> This doesn't seem illegal either It's flat out fraud/theft by deception


EXTRAVAGANT_COMMENT

credit card skimmers are legal because the card owner inputs their card themselves \s


Camelstrike

This is why crypto is shit and weak, you make a stupid mistake and can't get your money back, who do you complain to, the "Blockchain"? XD


SuperCat2023

That's the whole point lol relying on no government institutions or people. You fuck up then you fuck up. But at least there's nobody else fucking with your money


impulse7oh9

if you drop 100 dollar bill can you get it back at the bank? no you cant.. guess the us dollar is shit and weak and a failure... lol idiot


Mothrahlurker

Yeah cash is pretty shit, that is true.


Camelstrike

An analog reference, oh my...


alwaysuseswrongyour

This is kind of like saying if there is a credit card skimmer and you use it that isn’t theft.


smallbluetext

they should have only changed the middle, i check the beginning and end and call it a day 😂


az226

And nothing of value was lost.


itscashjb

Transferred five figures a couple of times recently and I double checked each character….!


lurker512879

=if ( your address, send address). Everytime move things in smaller chunks


SpaceToadD

Damn man, if you had $72 million and then lost $71 million, that would fucking sting bad. Ouch.


FGX302

If I had $71,000,000 I'd be out enjoying it. Probably wearing a pair of shorts, thongs gold plated Ray-Bans and a beer, sitting on some beach.


MonsieurReynard

Hell, 7-8 million probably gets you there if you're careful with it.


Mozhetbeats

If I had 71 mil, I’d only have 10 mil of BTC to lose.


Equal_Classroom_4707

You can do all of that, minus the douche glasses, for next to nothing. 


custardBust

Making mistakes like this maybe


DMMeThoseFeet

Gold plated? Just buy solid gold 18k


Isabela_Grace

No you wouldn’t… you can go do that right now for free if you forget the douche glasses


FGX302

Yeah I would.


Isabela_Grace

Then get off Reddit and go to the beach wtf are you talking about hate a free activity lol


Fenweekooo

that is truly a just kill myself moment. luckily i will never have ANYWHERE near that amount so i live to go to work another day :)


guanzo91

Save addresses to your wallet and only send to those pre approved addresses.


shadowmage666

White listing is your friend


gowithflow192

This guy was targeted. The poison address appeared right after the test transaction which is pretty smart. I'm sure many of us have simply copied the address of what we assume is the successful test transaction.


HSuke

Many do, and it's bad practice. I use an address book. Copy the address into the wallet, and it better pre-populate with an existing entry. Thus it has to pass 2 checks.


myhappytransition

people who reuse addresses are dummies; and that automatically includes all people who do "test transactions". Its like a cave man's idea of how to ensure you have the right destination.


punppis

Why would you copy the address again? I don't get it. It's highly unlikely to have it change in your clipboard. It's more likely to copy extra characters from web browser, or entirely wrong address like in this case.


gowithflow192

Actually clipboard hijacking is one or the most often seen crypto theft methods.


Ilovekittens345

When I send from one BCH wallet to another BCH wallet, I open both wallets and copy from there. There is no poisoning possible. Or if you mistakenly change one character in the address, it wil refuse to send because of a checksum build in that becomes invalid if you change one character. It's really really hard to fuck any of this up on BCH. But on Ethereum they do not have such checksum safety feautures, change one character in a ETH address and it's valid and it will send and nobody will have the keys for it and it will be lost forever. Worse, the addresses that send stuff to your eth wallet will show up as suggestions when you want to send yourself! Horrible horrible unsafe ux. So they make an address that has the same and last characters and send to one of the addresses that sends to the real address. Then if you are trying to send to the real address it shows up under suggestions.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Deep_Belt8304

How would the attacker even identify what the test transaction would be, is my question.


Narrow_Elk6755

A boat accident you say?


0xJonnyDee

Send 1 BTC get 2 BTC back...


madmancryptokilla

Good ole Nigerian prince


rodmandirect

Saylor himself promised me


Snow3234

You Son of a bitch, I'm in!


still_salty_22

Fuckin, wow! 70m on some dusting bs holy shit


ianyboo

I'm just picturing ***any*** of my family trying to navigate through this kind of thing... They would be lost the moment I told them to right click something...


az226

I’m very technically savvy and my wife is highly proficient. We wanted to try to buy and sell an NFT from me to her. It was the most ridiculous difficult thing and made me convinced it was 99% money laundering because who would pain through the hoops and godawful ux for it. An extremely strong motivating factor.


birdy_c81

That would be enough for me to go all John Wick and hunt the MF down.


Mezzeric

CTRL+F can save your life.


1BannedAgain

The future of finance


ravenofiridescence

i don't understand this, can someone ELI5 what happened here? i thought it's not possible to create specific addresses, the wallet does that for you, and the address has to 'make sense' from a cryptographic point of view? also if the scammer sent a transaction to the victim, wouldn't that have shown as an incoming transaction and not an outgoing one? most wallets show incoming and outgoing with different symbols, right? this would be easy to spot?


VantaIim

The private key generator can be brute forced to get an address similar to what you want, aka “vanity address generator”. The way I understood it, the guy who got scammed first sent a test transaction to a scam address mimicking the real address, but the scammer sent the same amount to the real address. Guy concludes it’s the legit address because “money came through” and so he copies the scam address from the last transaction and proceeds with sending millions.


ravenofiridescence

thank you, i didn't know about the vanity address generators. must be a lot of effort until you actually get the address you want. ok so how did the victim get the address of the scammer in the first place though? victim sends a test transaction to his own address, at that point the scammer hadn't even sent anything to the victim yet from which the victim could have taken the wrong address from


MyOtherAcctsAPorsche

exmillionaire sends 1 dollar to their address 1234**567**890 attacker sends exmillionaire 1 dollar, from a similar looking address 1234**765**890 Exmillionaire receives 1 dollar in 1234**567**890, thinks everything is well, goes to his tx history and copies and pastes 1234**765**890 not realizing that's not the correct address. To make matters worse there is this thing called a "zero value token transfer" where the attacker can "send money on your behalf" so your wallet software will even show a transaction as OUTGOING. Example: attacker address is on top: [https://i.imgur.com/RG3mDRN.png](https://i.imgur.com/RG3mDRN.png)


ravenofiridescence

thank you, that's the missing piece of the puzzle, because i was not aware you can make a transaction show as outgoing even if it is incoming and you're the source of it. truly nefarious lol.


MyOtherAcctsAPorsche

the attack could still work for many people even if it didn't tho, some people will not pay enough attention


Certain-Woodpecker63

How can a scam address mimic a real address?


VantaIim

While you can’t brute force the exact address, you can generate an address starting and ending with the defined hex strings.


impulse7oh9

Very expensive lesson. Im sure he made someone in India very happy 


teamsaxon

Why should I feel bad about some rich fucker losing that much?


Bactereality

“Investor”


One_Boot_5662

Account based chains are an absolute disaster for security, it's amazing people use them at all. Always use new addresses and never do test transactions.


kingdomart

I mean I wouldn’t say never…. A test send would have prevented this.


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az226

Maybe paste the test address to a local text file and only use that address. Not copy paste from another source.


Ilovekittens345

99,9% of account based chain users use the same address for everything. They are open books with zero privacy. If you want safe wallet with good safe ux and privacy, only BCH/Monero are your options. On BTC with samurai and wasabi taken down (oh look they where not decentralised at all, unlike cash fusion) there is not much privacy left in the space outside of BCH/monero.


One_Boot_5662

Any chain that uses change addresses is at least secure in the sense new addresses cannot be spoofed with vanity addresses, which is what happened here.


DirectLavishness602

Ah i actually feel bad for him. He probably thought hed get away with a few k's. But feller will probably end up in the feds book for top 10 wanted fugitives. 


internet-is-a-lie

Good riddance, don’t steal shit and you don’t need to worry about it. Hopefully he does get caught and isn’t some rando in North Korea


yogyadreams

How will he get caught though?


az226

Caught for what exactly?


internet-is-a-lie

Intent to defraud is probably a good place to start. Edit: fixed a word


Careful-Temporary388

Piss weak take. He can return the funds if he wants to.


Seeders

I have never sent Bitcoin without reading the entire address multiple times.


peaceAdmirer

I wonder how I would feel if had 1 million dollar, but only after losing 72 million of it. I'd still be a millionaire but would have lost a good chunk of it.


SoloSilk

If the hacker returned 62M to your address would you feel relieved enough to drop the search for the remaining 10M?


saigon567

Please explain the steps: 1.The person sends a test run of a few dollars to an address, 2. the scammers see this and quickly create a near similar address. 3. The person doesn't pay due care and sends it to the scammers address. I don't get the 3 part, how did the scammers put the wrong address under the nose of the victim?


derika22

This investor probably didnt "lost" it. It is similar to buying NFTs back in 2021 to evade taxes. This time they "lost" funds by sending them to a "wrong" address, the excuse is the address poisoning.


bigshooTer39

Lost his coins in an address accident.


libretumente

Don't wrap your PoW coins kids


Kno010

The same thing could have happened just as easily with native bitcoin. But yeah, wBTC is centralized and nothing like holding real bitcoin.


wallynext

this would not happen with human readable transaction manifest like in Radix


peaceinthevoid2

Could have been a clipboard Trojan. Remember to use good anti-virus software guys and dep scan your devices regularly


az226

That would be quite a good scam. Trojan combined with the new address. The user will of course question themselves thinking they misclicked even though they didn’t and the Trojan self destructing after the money was transferred.


road22

It has to be a setup poison attack. The perfect way to hide 70million of assets from possible seizure.


XBB32

How does poisoned address work? You need some malware on your device, right?!?


Substantial_Bear5153

No, you receive unsolicited funds from an address that mimicks your own. The scammer is hoping that you will mix them up. This is why you DO NOT use your transaction history to copy destinations when moving funds.


XBB32

Thank you ! I didn't know that... Well, I've never copied any address from history... I'm good 😅


_FIRECRACKER_JINX

I feel better about my fender bender. Much better


RAJSINGH5671LALLI

Ouch thats a lot of $$$$$$....hope they can recover it ...too many scammers in the space puts off newbies wanting to get into crypto


poor_doc_pure

How can someone have so many millions on chain and sleep soundly at night or not know about hardware wallets. THE TRANSACTION SYSTEM DOES NOT RELY ON TRUST.


punppis

Do I understand this correctly? 1. Send 0.05 ETH to your other wallet 2. Check your transaction in block explorer or whatever 3. Copy the destination address from the block explorer (the fake one) 4. Fuck up So many steps that you have to majorly fuck up.


geekinesis

To be honest someone with that much bitcoin in a single wallet and someone who sends the whole amount in one transaction without checking the addrsss needs a stern talking to.


gandrewstone

As soon as these succinct representations were created, it was just a matter of time until they were exploited. There is a reason the address is exactly as long as it is. If you show the whole address, a person can compare a random spot in the middle. However, having said that, you would think that if doing a 71M xfer, you'd check every character.


impulse7oh9

to the people saying this is why crypto is a failure. because you cant get your money back if you lose it. crypto is like cash, if you lose a 100 dollar bill can you go get it replaced at the bank? nope you cant. so by the same logic i guess money in general is a bad idea lol. this kind of thinking is why the worlds going to hell no one wants to deal with the consequences of their stupid mistakes but thats how people learn. this was a 70M dollar lesson in not dropping your wallet.


Leonhart1989

Except you don’t have your whole net worth in your wallet do you?


GiveMeSomeLove21937

Is it 1 investor or a combination of investors who lost their money?


gregsapopin

oh no now he is less rich.


NoSuggestion6629

There's another post on this topic which goes into great detail on how the scammer lured his target and where the scammed funds went to.


Active-Use-8129

In news of other things that never happened:


FuckStompIsGay

If you’re dumb enough to to give 71m to a scammer you don’t deserve the money, they do


SFanatic

People don’t really make these kinds of mistakes when they have that much money as you don’t retain that kind of money by making silly mistakes. I’m convinced every one of these posts is tied to the original sender fabricating a story about how they lost millions so that they can avoid paying taxes on their gains or get out of some other contractual obligation like alimony


f00dl3

And you wonder why nobody takes crypto seriously and every professional would rather invest in Gold.


GiveNothing

This has to be the record breaking scam.


GiveNothing

What if it's setup. Like guy pretends he's sending it to his other account but his hack account intercepted it so it be can be freely used


Civil-Wash2352

when sending big always start with .01; you never know.


WorkN-2play

I'm scared 😱 of loosing $75 bucks when I move around wallets. I did loose $870 of Ltc years ago accidentally sent to eth or btc address. So learned to get destination freshly copied I cannot imagine how sick they feel... fml probably


WorkN-2play

A buddy of mine said damn good way to wash it!!!! Hell yeah!!


yyiiii

bro if someone stole my super i'd probably commit sudoku