Infamous scam-as-a-service kingpin ‘Pink Drainer’ appears to have found itself on the receiving end of the very type of scheme it once peddled.
According to an update shared by MisTrack, a crypto compliance platform, the notorious wallet-draining group lost about $30,000 worth of Ethereum due to an “address poisoning” scam on July 7.
With this type of fraud, the scammer targets pairs of addresses that frequently interact with each other and “poisons” the transaction history of one of them by sending to it a small amount of crypto from an address that is subtly different but bears close resemblance to the victim’s usual contact.
The victims then unwittingly transfer funds to the familiar address by copying the “poisoned” string of characters and end up misplacing the funds for the criminals’ benefit.
Ironically, this method mirrors the very tactics Pink Drainer was known for employing against others.
MisTrack’s tweet read,
“Scamming the scammer. It seems like an address associated with the Pink Drainer fell victim to the address poisoning scam. Can’t say we feel bad for them tho.”
The latest development comes almost two months after Pink Drainer announced that it was shutting down its nefarious infrastructure. As noted by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, the developers of Pink Drainer had released a statement saying that they had reached their goal and would retire, while adding that all stored information would be wiped and securely destroyed.
Data compiled by Scam Sniffer and Dune Analytics revealed that Pink Drainer had stolen approximately $85.3 million worth of funds from 21,131 victims.