Pink Drainer was tricked by a nearly identical address, leading them to send 10 ETH to a scammer’s wallet in late June.
The notorious hacking group, Pink Drainer lost 10 Ether (around $30,000) to an “address poisoning” scam, as reported by crypto compliance platform MistTrack on July 7.
MistTrack explained that an address poisoning scam occurs when an attacker sends small amounts of crypto from a wallet with a similar-looking address to one of the target’s regular wallets.
The aim is to trick the target into accidentally sending funds to the scammer’s wallet. Scammers use bots to find new transactions and create addresses with similar first and last characters, hoping victims will copy the scam address instead of their original one.
In this case, Pink Drainer was duped by an address almost identical to their previous wallet. This trick led them to accidentally send 10 ETH to the scammer’s wallet in late June.
This incident comes just a month after Pink Drainer announced its retirement on May 17, having achieved its goal of stealing over $85 million in crypto assets. Data from Dune Analytics shows Pink Drainer stole $85.3 million in crypto from July 2023.
While Pink Drainer may have halted its operations, other drainer toolkit services like Angel Drainer, Pussy Drainer, and Venom Drainer continue to assist criminals in stealing crypto assets.
Crypto users should double-check wallet addresses before transactions to avoid falling prey to address poisoning scams, highlighting ongoing risks in the crypto world where even notorious scammers can be victims.