According to an August 24 Forbes report, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently made a costly and embarrassing mistake in the handling of cryptocurrency seized during a narcotics investigation. Federal agents fell victim to a relatively common “address poisoning” scam.
In May, the DEA confiscated over $50,000 worth of Tether (USDt), a dollar-pegged stablecoin, from two Binance accounts suspected of laundering drug money. While processing the seizure, the agency sent a test transaction of $45.36 to the US Marshals Service’s cryptocurrency wallet address, according to the Forbes story.
An Embarrassing Blunder for the DEA
However, a crafty scammer noticed this transaction on the public blockchain ledger. The scammer generated a fake Tether address that matched the first and last characters of the marshals’ real address.
Learn how to protect yourself as you trade your digital assets: 15 Most Common Crypto Scams To Look Out For
The scammer then tricked the DEA by using an “airdrop” to insert this fake address into the agency’s cryptocurrency wallet. Believing the deposited address belonged to the Marshals Service, the DEA mistakenly wired over $55,000 in Tether to the fraudster’s own
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Author: Josh Adams
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