Crypto Influencer SillyTuna Loses $24M in Address Poisoning Scam

Crypto influencer SillyTuna reportedly lost about $24 million in aEthUSDC after falling victim to a sophisticated address-poisoning scam that tricked them into sending funds to a fake wallet.

In the attack, scammers used look-alike wallet addresses and small “dust” transactions to trick the victim into sending funds to a fraudulent address.

After the transfer, the stolen funds were quickly swapped into ETH and later converted into DAI. The victim later said the situation escalated beyond financial loss, claiming they received threats after the incident and now plan to leave the crypto industry entirely.

Many major crypto thefts don’t involve hacked systems or stolen private keys. Instead, they exploit normal user behavior and small mistakes.

That seems to be what has occurred in this case. Blockchain security companies claim that SillyTuna was a victim of a well-organized address-poisoning attack and lost approximately $24 million.

The event took place on March 5 and puts emphasis on how even more mature crypto users are falling prey to social-engineering scams.

The victim claimed that the situation went beyond the theft of digital assets, claiming to have received threats in real life, which resulted in police intervention and, eventually, the choice to leave the crypto world.

How the $24 Million Attack Happened

SillyTuna, whose Ethereum wallet address is 0xd2e8827d4b1c44f64d1fa01bfbc14dc8545eca41, became the latest high-profile victim of an address-poisoning attack.

Blockchain security companies PeckShield and PaiDun identified the incident shortly after it happened. Their analysis suggests the scammers carried out a staged poisoning campaign before draining the wallet.

Most of the stolen funds were held in aEthUSDC, a bridged version of the USDC stablecoin.

After the transfer, the attacker quickly swapped the tokens into ETH and later converted them into around $20 million worth of DAI.

On-chain investigators claimed that the assets are now stored in two wallets managed by the attacker and have yet to be sent to crypto mixers.

Nevertheless, analysts observed that the attacker had already transferred small parts of the money to Arbitrum, which seemed to represent plans of further laundering.

Investigators also found out intermediate wallets that were used to transfer the main transfer.

The theft was so massive that it is one of the biggest reported incidents of address poisoning in the recent past. However, the interesting part of the case is what followed.

After the incident, SillyTuna warned followers about the dangers of address-poisoning scams and said the experience may push them to leave the crypto industry.