DEA

The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) accidentally sent $55,000 in cryptocurrency to a fraudster.

Earlier in a three-year investigation, the regulator had seized about $500,000 in USDT from two Binance accounts and stored it on a Trezor cold wallet.

The fraudster monitored the activity of the agency's accounts, and when those sent a test transaction of $45.36 USDT to the US Marshals Service, generated a similar address to impersonate them.

From it, he made a reverse transfer to the DEA account, counting on the regulator's inattention in copying the address. The agency accepted the fraudster's address as legitimate and sent him more than $55,000.

Immediately after the regulator discovered his mistake, it asked the issuer of the Tether stablecoin to freeze the lost assets, but the fraudster managed to convert the stolen USDT.