Ten months after being the victim of a $24 million theft, a phishing scheme victim has received a substantial portion of their stolen funds returned.
Scam Sniffer initially reported the incident on July 13, which revealed that the impostor returned nearly $9.3 million of the misappropriated funds across two transactions using Dai stablecoin.
On July 8, the initial transfer, which totaled $5.23 million, was returned, and a subsequent transfer of $4.04 million was sent at 12:06 pm UTC on July 13 according to Etherscan data.
The phishing attack resulted in the user losing 9,579 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) and 4,850 Rocket Pool (rETH) tokens on September 6, 2023.
The victim unknowingly granted the fraudster authorization to approve tokens through “Increase Allowance” transactions, a feature of ERC-20 tokens that permits third-party spending rights.
The returned $9.3 million approximates 38.4% of the stolen funds at current market values, as determined by the prices at the time of the theft.
Notably, the declared Ether alone would be valued at approximately $47.5 million at the current trading price.
The victim’s account received the Dai payments after they were tracked back via an address linked to Railgun Relay, a middleman for privacy protocols.
It is important to mention that the fraudster also contacted the victim on July 6, announcing the stealing and expressing a desire to return the funds through a different wallet address.
The balance of the scammer’s wallet, as seen on Etherscan, has increased marginally to barely over $3 million as a result of their return.
It is important to note that the METAGALAXY LAND (MEGALAND) token from the BNB Chain accounts for a substantial portion of these funds, nearly 99%.
In 2023, phishing fraudsters collectively took nearly $300 million from 324,000 victims, according to Scam Sniffer’s 2023 Wallet Drainers Report.
Notable actors, including Inferno Drainer and MS Drainer, were accountable for substantial quantities. Pink Drainer, which was prominently featured this year, ceased operations in May after plundering more than $85 million.
Concurrently, the cryptocurrency market has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, attaining a record recovery rate of 77% for stolen funds in the second quarter of 2024. Consequently, the restitution is necessary.
According to Hacken’s Web3 Security Report Q2 2024, $347.4 million of the stolen crypto funds were effectively recovered or suspended out of the total $512.9 million that was lost.
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