11-Year-Old Ethereum Wallet Moves $4.6M as Scammers Strike Within Three Minutes

An Ethereum wallet that received its first coins in July 2015, in Ethereum's very first block, sent money for the first time in 11 years on November 9. Within three minutes, scammers tried to trick its owner into sending 2,154.94 ETH, about $4.6 million, to them instead.

What happened

The owner started carefully, with a test transfer of 0.05 ETH. Three minutes later, scammers began sending tiny payments to the wallet from addresses made to look like the one that had just received the test.

The real address starts with 0x1321beb and ends with C7931A44. The fake one starts with 0x13211f7 and ends with CE41A44. One scammer made 43 of these tiny transfers.

The trick did not work. 38 minutes after the test, the owner sent the full 2,154.94 ETH to the correct address. The block explorer Etherscan now labels the fake addresses as phishing.

Why it matters

This scam is called address poisoning, and it targets anyone, not just whales. Attackers watch for test transfers and fill your transaction history with look-alike addresses. They hope you will copy the wrong one from the history when you send the real amount.

Many wallets and explorers shorten an address to its first and last few characters, and that is exactly what the fakes copy. The defence is simple: never copy an address from your transaction history, and check the whole address before you send.

About the wallet

Until November 9, the wallet had never sent a single coin. It received its first ETH in July 2015 and another 755 ETH in March 2016.