The DEA Accidentally Sent $50,000 Of Seized Cryptocurrency To A Scammer

Ouch.

The swindler “airdropped” the fake address into the DEA’s account by dropping a token into the DEA account so it looked like the test payment made to the Marshals. The idea here was to basically trick the DEA into thinking the scammer’s address was actually the Marshal’s service’s address. Crypto addresses are so long that people usually just copy and paste instead of typing them fresh each time. Airdropping is a legitimate feature in cryptocurrency and sees an individual or entity drop tokens representing a certain value of a currency into someone’s account. It’s normally done as part of a launch of a new kind of token, but it’s also been abused by those seeking to dupe crypto owners into scams like this.