In a surprising turn of events, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), responsible for enforcing anti-drug laws, found itself at a loss of $55,000 in seized Tether due to falling victims to scammers earlier this year.
The incident unfolded in May during a multiyear investigation, where the DEA confiscated over $500,000 worth of USDT from two Binance accounts alleged to have been laundering money from illicit drug sales, as reported by Forbes on August 24.
These seized funds were securely stored in encrypted wallets managed by the DEA. As part of the forfeiture process, a test amount of just over $45 USDT was sent by the DEA to the US Marshals Service. The transaction was detected by an observant on-chain Investigator, who quickly established an encrypted wallet imitating the Marshals' account, a technique termed "address poisoning" often employed by scammers.
Subsequently, scammers airdropped tokens into DEA wallets, creating a recent transaction appearance on the spoofed address. This tactic deceived the wallet owner into unknownly transferring funds to the incorrect address. Despite the DEA's attempts to freeze the funds through Tether after the Marshals' notification, The scammers had already moved the USDT to Ether and bitcoin, further transferring them to a separate crypto wallet.
While both the DEA and the FBI are currently probing the incident, the perpetrators remain unidentified. The investigators have so far traced the gas fees paid to the attacker's wallet to two Binance accounts, registered using Gmail email addresses. The hope now lies in Google potent really holding crucial information to assist in tracing the owners of these Gmail accounts.
