Investor Loses $3.05 Million in USDT to a Phishing Attack

A notable blockchain analytics platform noted that an investor just lost a significant amount of USDT in a malicious phishing attack.

In a post on X, Lookonchain reveals that the crypto investor lost over $3 million in USDT after unknowingly approving a malicious transaction yesterday, August 5. 

According to the analytics platform, the attacker used a phishing exploit to access and transfer the funds from the victim’s Ethereum wallet. Blockchain data confirmed the incident.

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$3 Million Lost in Single Phishing Attack

The attack took place at approximately 6:28 PM UTC yesterday. The wallet involved, 0x2…695, interacted with Aave’s Ethereum USDT contract during the incident.

According to on-chain data, the victim received 33,839 aEthUSDT earlier in the transaction, suggesting the attacker may have used a fake airdrop or deceptive token transfer as bait to initiate the exploit.

Meanwhile, the attacker received 3,087,821 aETHUSDT tokens, valued at roughly $3.05 million, from the victim’s wallet.

Afterward, the hacker moved the funds to two addresses. First, it moved 463,173 USDT to an address identified as “Fake_Phishing” and then moved the remaining 2.6 million USDT to an unidentified address.

The Fake_Phishing address appears to have sent 463K USDT to a dead address, while the unidentified address moved $2.6 million to several other addresses, swapped them for 730 ETH, and then staked these ETH tokens.

Lookonchain Encourages Vigilance

Following the loss, Lookonchain emphasized the importance of understanding transaction prompts before signing them, warning that a single careless click could result in the complete loss of wallet funds.

Notably, this case is not an isolated incident. Last year, a DeFi whale lost $55.47 million in DAI after signing a phishing transaction that transferred asset ownership to a scammer.  The funds, stored in Maker, became inaccessible once control shifted. The attacker quickly moved the DAI to a new wallet and began converting it to Ethereum.

Before that, a MakerDAO delegate lost $11 million in tokens, including USDe, to a phishing attack. Scam Sniffer reported that the attacker used multiple phishing signatures to trick the delegate’s wallet into approving malicious transactions.

Over $2 Billion Lost to Hackers in the first Half of 2025

Notably, incidents of stolen funds continue to rise. In the first half of 2025, crypto theft reached a record high as bad actors stole $2.1 billion across 75 attacks. The figure marks a 10% rise from H1 2022 and nearly matches the $2.2 billion stolen in all of 2024. 

The largest single incident was the Bybit hack, which accounted for $1.5 billion and was linked to North Korean threat actors. Another major breach involved Israeli-affiliated Predatory Sparrow, which targeted Iran’s Nobitex exchange during the Israel-Iran conflict, seizing $90 million and sending it to unusable addresses.