Victim loses $2.5M in copy-paste scam twice

A crypto user lost more than $2.5 million in a scam while copying an incorrect address from contaminated transaction records twice. At first, the victim tried to move 843,166 Tether (USDT) to another wallet but ended up transferring it to the wrong address. However, the victim again sent out $1.7 million worth of USDT to the same wrong address.

Data shows that the victim (0x86C0300Fc369E) had moved $838,611 worth of USDT to a correct address (0x4668D1Fe87444a4d7508e83c89bfDAF1117e6B76) just before falling prey to scammers. Transactions show that the suffer’s wallet received zero assets from a wallet address 0x4668EE748c88DA4FEc595773b22f96f366eD6B76, which led to a major mistake.

Scam Sniffer in a post suggested that it is a prime display of Transaction History Poisoning. In this con trick, scammers send a fake or dust transfer with a similar address. As their fake address appears in the ledger history, a victim copies the address from history thinking it’s legitimate but the funds get sent to a scammer instead.

According to a report, crypto users lost $5.29 million to phishing scams in April 2025. It was a 17% drop from March. However, the number of victims jumped 26% to 7,565 addresses hit, which is up from 5,992 in March.

🚨 ScamSniffer April 2025 Phishing Report

April losses: $5.29M | 7,565 victims
VS March: -17% in losses | +26% in victims

Key insight: Notable spike in victim count despite lower total losses. Largest attack netted $1.43M via phishing, followed by $700K from address poisoning… pic.twitter.com/mJbGgGyGrN

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) May 3, 2025

A crypto whale who signed several phishing signatures and lost $1.43 million. This implies that even the savviest, high-value players remain vulnerable. For comparison, the top March loss was $1.82 million, again via phishing signatures.

The second-biggest April attack saw one user lose $700,000 after copying the wrong address. Another user lost $150,000, while 0xEFc4f1d5 also sent over $467K to the wrong address in the same way.

SlowMist flags another security alert

SlowMist has also issued a security alert in a post where multiple users have reported receiving SMS messages from “well-known exchanges”. The message says that “Your withdrawal verification code is xxx. If you did not request this transaction, call xxx immediately for assistance.” Once calling back to the number, a user is being told that it’s a “security breach” and get connected to someone claiming to be from “hardware wallet support.”

Later, the scammers guide the victims to a phishing site and trick them into entering their mnemonic phrase. This has resulted in cold wallet thefts worth over $1 million, till now.

Recently, one of the most infamous phishing gangs in crypto, Inferno Drainer, exploited Ethereum’s latest upgrade to drain wallets. On May 24, Scam Sniffer flagged a case where a wallet recently upgraded to EIP-7702 lost nearly $150,000.

EIP-7702 is a part of the Pectra upgrade which allows Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily act like smart contract wallets during transactions. Slowmist founder Yu Xian stated that the Inferno Drainer carried out the theft using a more sophisticated version of traditional phishing. It was unlike any earlier scams that hijack user wallets directly.

He mentioned that the scammer used a delegated MetaMask wallet, one already authorized under EIP-7702. This allowed the hackers to approve token transfers silently through a batch authorization process. In this process, the victim unknowingly triggered an “execute” command within MetaMask that led to processing malicious batch data in the background. In the end, tokens were drained.

The digital assets industry witnesses such attacks when the market is trading high and traders are all in with the hunger to bag more profits. The crypto market has registered several highs over the last week, while the fear and greed index is flashing “Greed” among the traders. The cumulative crypto market cap is running up to hit the $3.5 trillion mark, and Bitcoin, the biggest digital asset, posted its fresh ATH of over $111,900 on May 22.

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