The sufferer first despatched a $50 take a look at to the proper handle earlier than the attacker’s look-alike handle captured the complete switch.
Scammer transformed stolen USDT to DAI inside minutes, blocking any potential Tether freeze motion.
Funds are being laundered through Twister Money, a mixing service that obscures transaction trails.
Comparable $70M handle poisoning case in Might 2024 resulted in 90% restoration after sufferer negotiated on-chain with attacker.
Dec. 20 (Crypto-Information.internet) – A crypto dealer misplaced almost $50 million in USDT after falling sufferer to an handle poisoning assault on Dec. 19, with the stolen funds already transformed to an unfreezable stablecoin and routed by means of mixing protocols.
The attacker drained 49,999,950 USDT from a pockets that had been energetic for 2 years and funded by means of Binance, in response to safety agency Web3 Antivirus. The sufferer had despatched a $50 take a look at transaction to the meant recipient handle earlier than transferring the complete quantity to a fraudulent look-alike handle that the scammer had planted within the pockets’s transaction historical past.
Handle poisoning works by sending small quantities of cryptocurrency from addresses designed to imitate reputable ones. On-chain information present the scammer’s handle shared the identical first 4 and final 4 characters because the sufferer’s meant vacation spot. The sufferer copied the spoofed handle from their transaction historical past as a substitute of the proper one.
Speedy Conversion Blocks Restoration
Inside minutes of receiving the stolen funds, the attacker swapped the USDT for 49,533,438 DAI utilizing a decentralized change. Not like USDT, which Tether can freeze on-chain, DAI is a decentralized stablecoin with no central issuer able to blocking transfers.
Tether has frozen over $2.7 billion in USDT thus far in cooperation with regulation enforcement, however the fast conversion left no window for intervention.
Funds Traced to Twister Money
The stolen funds at the moment are being laundered by means of Twister Money, a mixing protocol that obscures transaction trails, in response to blockchain analytics agency Arkham Intelligence.
The incident represents only one class of escalating threats going through crypto holders in 2025. Whereas handle poisoning exploits digital transaction histories, bodily “wrench assaults” involving kidnapping and extortion have additionally doubled this 12 months, demonstrating that criminals are focusing on crypto wealth by means of each technical and violent means.
Restoration Stays Unlikely
The theft mirrors a Might 2024 incident the place a sufferer misplaced $70 million in wrapped Bitcoin to deal with poisoning. In that case, the sufferer efficiently negotiated with the attacker utilizing blockchain messaging, providing a ten% bounty and recovering roughly 90% of the funds.
Nevertheless, with the present sufferer’s funds already transformed to DAI and partially blended by means of Twister Money, blockchain analysts think about restoration unlikely. The sufferer has not made any public assertion.
Sources
Web3 Antivirus X Publish – Authentic discovery, assault sequence particulars, sufferer pockets profile URL:
Etherscan Transaction Report – Actual stolen quantity (49,999,950 USDT), scammer handle, fund conversion particulars, timestamp (Dec-19-2025 04:01:23 PM UTC) URL:
Arkham Intelligence Visualizer – Fund circulate monitoring, laundering pathway evaluation URL:
Protos Article – Assault methodology particulars, sufferer pockets provenance (2-year historical past, Binance funding), $70M prior case comparability URL:
