Crypto Holder Loses $12.25M to Address Poisoning Attack

In an address-poisoning scam, a crypto trader lost 4,556 ETH, worth $12.25 million. Fraudsters capitalize on transaction history by adding fraudulent addresses on a daily basis.

One crypto-holder lost 4,556 ETH, equivalent to $12.25million, in an advanced address-poisoning heist. The victim became a victim of scammers who were adding fraudulent addresses to transaction histories.

According to ScamSniffer on X, the attack occurred after the victim copied an address in an infected transfer history. The blockchain security service cautions its users against copying addresses on transaction histories.

🚨💔 10 hours ago, another victim lost 4,556 ETH ($12.25M) by copying the wrong address from a contaminated transfer history.

⚠️ Never copy the address from transfer histories. pic.twitter.com/L563Pug0qj

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) January 31, 2026

Source: realScamSniffer 

How Scammers Vanish With Millions Daily

Address poisoning exploits the address display in crypto wallets. Scammers create millions of vanity addresses that appear to be real and exploit them to send dust transactions to the wallets of victims.

The address of the victim, 0xd6741220a947941bF290799811FcDCeA8AE4A7Da, was supposed to transfer money to 0x6D90CC8Ce83B6D0ACf634ED45d4bCc37eDdD2E48. Nevertheless, they deposited ETH to the address of the scammer, 0x6d9052b2DF589De00324127fe2707eb34e592e48.

ScamSniffer described on X how transaction-history poisoning operates: scammers submit fraudulent transfers to similar addresses, and the transfers will be presented in the history of a victim. These are addresses that are copied by victims who believe they are genuine.

The transactions in blockchain are irreversible. The stolen money disappeared forever in the wallet of the scammer.

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December Attack Claimed $50M From Single Trader

Another trader lost 49,999,950 USDT in December 2025 through similar tactics. The victim initially sent a test deposit of 50 USDT, then the scammer had his or her automated script poison the history prior to the rest of the 50 million USD being transferred.

Security specialists at Cyvers and Immunefi report industrial-scale attacks.In January 2026, there were 2.8 million Ethereum transactions per day. Millions of them are poisonous transactions aimed at victims, according to Citi researchers.

Over 1 million attempts to poison are made each day on Ethereum. On January 21, 2026, the Saga EVM blockchain suspended its operations following the drain of 7 million dollars by hackers. The Truebit protocol had lost 26.6 million ETH in a security exploit that had occurred previously.

ShinyHunters hackers demanded ransom money to have Waltio, a French crypto-tax site, release customer information of 50,000 users, purportedly stolen.

Chainalysis announced that over 17 billion was stolen by means of several types of scams in 2025. Impersonation fraud, such as address poisoning, increased 1,400 percent in comparison to past years.