On-chain transactions leading up to the return suggest this wasn’t a white hat hacker but a malicious actor who intended to steal the funds before investigators got involved.
$71 million worth of stolen cryptocurrencies from a recent wallet poisoning scam has been returned to the victim in a fortunate but mysterious turn of events.
The unknown attacker returned $71 million worth of Ether (ETH) tokens on May 12, after the high-profile phishing incident caught the attention of multiple blockchain investigation firms. On-chain security firm Lookonchain unpacked the details in an X post on May 13:
This comes as a surprising development to the attack from May 3, when an investor sent $71 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) to a bait wallet address, falling victim to a wallet poisoning scam. The scammer created a wallet address with similar alphanumeric characters and made a small transaction to the victim’s account.
