# @lookonchain: Victim lost $50M in address poisoning attack after test transfer

Source: https://xcancel.com/lookonchain/status/2002201227959107793
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/lookonchain-Victim-lost-dollar50M-in-address-poisoning-attack-after-test-transfer?index=0x6947e0a13e307b5643ba22d5e6940e459fbb300a68358d0d18845642918033923baee8cb
Submitted by misha on 2025-12-21 UTC, 5 upvotes, 3 comments

## Summary

A victim lost $50 million in USDT to an address poisoning attack after copying a fake address from their transaction history. The victim, identified only as 0xcB80, first sent 50 USDT as a test to their own address, 0xbaf4b1aF...B6495F8b5. The scammer then created a wallet with the same first and last four characters, and the victim sent the remaining 49,999,950 USDT to that fake address. The article notes that many wallets hide the middle of addresses with "...", so users often check only the start and end.

## Article

A victim (0xcB80) lost $50M due to a copy-paste address mistake.

Before transferring 50M $USDT, the victim sent 50 $USDT as a test to his own address 0xbaf4b1aF...B6495F8b5.

The scammer immediately spoofed a wallet with the same first and last 4 characters and performed an address poisoning attack.

Since many wallets hide the middle part of the address with "..." to make the UI look better.
Many users often copy the address from transaction histories, and usually only check the starting and ending letters.
This victim likes to do the same.

When transferring the remaining 49,999,950 $USDT, the victim copied the fake address from his transaction history.

As a result, 49,999,950 $USDT was sent straight to the scammer.

A painful lesson!

Always double-check the address before making a transfer.
Don't copy addresses from your transaction history for convenience.

Source:
https://x.com/SpecterAnalyst/status/2002075668570309054

## Comments

**misha**: One of the oldest tricks in the book. I might agree w/ one of the comments: 

> showing "..." is a mistake

**macbudkowski.eth**: Wondering why someone sending that much money hasn't added a new address to their wallet address book. Shouldn't it be safer to just use your own wallet address book, so that someone would have to compromise the wallet app which is harder than spoofing addresses?

**tim**: > Wondering why someone sending that much money hasn't added a new address to their wallet address book.

My theory inevitably has to be that they do not deserve to have this much money because they don't know it's value. So it's incompetency.

I think it's all too easy to be in a position where your parents inherited you a crazy amount of wealth and then you fumble 50M because you think that's a reasonable amount to gamble. Am I crazy? 

Like what I'm saying is that's just in relation to how much we own. Maybe I'll fumble 5000 EUR once, and a person who's like 10000x more wealthy fumbles 50M?