Scammer Returns $9.3M to Victim 10 Months after $24M Phishing Heist

Unexpectedly, 10 months after taking $24 million, a phishing fraudster gave approximately $9.3 million back to a victim. Scam Sniffer first reported this occurrence on July 13. It turned out that the fraudster utilized two transactions of Dai stablecoin to repay the cash.

Etherscan data indicates that on July 8 and July 13, respectively, the scammer refunded $5.23 million and $4.04 million. On September 6, 2023, the victim initially lost 4,850 Rocket Pool (rETH) and 9,579 Lido Staked Ether (stETH). The victim of the phishing attempt unintentionally enabled token approvals through ERC-20 tokens’ “Increase Allowance” transaction function, which permits third-party spending privileges.

Based on the valuations at the time of the heist, the $9.3 million that was returned represents around 38.4% of the money that was stolen. The value of the taken Ether now would be around $47.5 million. Before the Dai money were moved to the victim’s account, they were tracked down using an address connected to Railgun Relay, a privacy protocol middleman.

💰 The scammer returned $9.27M in DAI to the victim.

(credits: @bax1337) https://t.co/xwSASQOUis pic.twitter.com/T5vF1Ak3wo

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) July 13, 2024

On July 6, the con artist contacted the victim again using a different wallet address, confessing to the crime and saying he wanted to give the money back. After the return, the scammer has just over $3 million in their wallet, almost all of which are in the BNB Chain’s METAGALAXY LAND (MEGALAND) token.

Phishing schemes are still a problem in the cryptocurrency space. Scam Sniffer’s 2023 Wallet Drainers Report states that in 2023 alone, 324,000 victims fell prey to phishing scammers who took over $300 million from them. Notable con artists like Inferno Drainer and MS Drainer were in charge of large sums of money; Pink Drainer rose to prominence this year and then shut down in May after stealing more than $85 million.

Scams are common, but the cryptocurrency sector has proven resilient. A record 77% of stolen funds were recovered in the second quarter of 2024. Out of the $512.9 million lost overall, $347.4 million of the stolen cryptocurrency funds were either successfully recovered or frozen, according to Hacken’s Web3 Security Report Q2 2024.

Phishing Scammer Returns $9.3M to Victim 10 Months After $24M Heist pic.twitter.com/5eHmwq5t7V

— CryptoMaksymus (@CryptoMaksymus) July 15, 2024

Scams using cryptocurrency have also flourished on social networking sites like X. A web3 anti-scam business called Scam Sniffer disclosed that X.com account impersonation costs the corporation close to $50 million every month. Yi He, a co-founder of Binance, recently expressed alarm to Elon Musk on the spread of cryptocurrency scams on X and urged him to take action.

This incident serves as a reminder of the continuous difficulties in protecting digital assets and the necessity of greater security precautions and awareness in the bitcoin industry.