The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was recently tricked by a crypto scammer, resulting in a loss of over $50,000 in USDT. The scammer used a technique known as address poisoning, which involves sending transactions of no value to a victim’s account from a similar address. The DEA had seized approximately $500,000 in Tether from two Binance accounts believed to be laundering illicit drug money, and stored it in a Trezor wallet. The scammer quickly created a fake wallet with the same first five and last four characters as the Marshals’ wallet, and sent small amounts of Tether to the DEA’s wallet to make it appear as if the fake wallet belonged to the Marshals Service. The DEA then sent over $55,000 in crypto to the scammer.The DEA attempted to freeze the funds after the Marshals Service alerted them, but the funds had already been converted into Bitcoin and Ethereum. The authorities found some clues as to the identity of the scammer, such as two email addresses linked to Binance accounts, but the perpetrator is still at large.
| Information |
Details |
| Geography |
North America |
| Countries |
🇺🇸 🇲🇹 |
| Sentiment |
negative |
| Relevance Score |
9 |
| People |
None |
| Companies |
DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, Binance, MetaMask, Trezor |
| Currencies |
USDT, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, USD |
| Securities |
None |
