Earlier this year, the DEA was duped by a common cryptocurrency scam, resulting in the agency losing over $50,000 in digital money it had seized during a three-year investigation into the use of digital currency for laundering suspected drug proceeds. In May, the DEA seized just over $500,000 in the dollar-linked cryptocurrency Tether from two Binance accounts it suspected were being used to funnel illegal narcotics proceeds, according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes. The funds were placed in DEA-controlled accounts, stored in a Trezor hardware-based wallet and placed into a secure facility. Meanwhile, a scammer had been watching the blockchain and noticed when the DEA sent a test amount of $45.36 in Tether to the United States Marshals Service, as part of standard forfeiture processing. The scammer quickly set up a cryptocurrency address that matched the first five and last four characters of the Marshals account. (In cryptocurrency, unique addresses are attached to each wallet and it is to these addresses users send funds–think of it like a long bank account number, though it’s typically around 30 characters.) The swindler “airdropped” the fake address into the DEA’s account by dropping a token into the DEA account so it looked like the test payment made to the Marshals.
Full story : The DEA Accidentally Sent $50,000 Of Seized Cryptocurrency To A Scammer.
