A victim who had $90 worth of Ethereum (ETH) stolen managed to get the hacker’s Tether (USDT) address blacklisted with the help of the police and cyber officials. It is expected that all frozen funds will be returned to the victim.
Tether Freezes $107,306 Worth of USDT
The victim, known as L3yum on Twitter, emptied their wallet on March 16 after successfully obtaining the hot wallet seed phrase of the hacker. A significant portion of the funds in the wallet, which included some cryptocurrencies from smaller projects and several NFTs related to Yuga Labs, were converted to USDT.
On August 11, L3yum shared on Twitter that the hacker’s Ethereum-based USDT address had been blacklisted, stating, “After working with the police and cyber officials in my country today, I managed to freeze and blacklist the funds converted to USDT.” At the time of writing this article, 90 ETH was worth approximately $166,000, and the blacklisted wallet contained $107,306 worth of USDT. This indicates that the victim has a chance to recover a significant portion of the stolen funds.
Frozen USDT Will be Burned
It is not yet confirmed whether the victim will be reimbursed. However, in previous cases where a USDT address was blacklisted under similar circumstances, Tether has burned the blacklisted USDT and reissued an equal amount to the rightful owner. It should be noted that obtaining a court order is generally required for Tether to blacklist a USDT address.
Responding to comments questioning whether the frozen funds will be returned, L3yum stated that it is a possible option for the future but has not been approved yet. They said, “I’m not sure about this, but yes, as far as I understand, this is how it works, and the funds that are blacklisted are essentially burned. Still, don’t rely solely on what I’m saying, but that’s what I understand.”
It is still unclear how the hacker gained access to the victim’s hot wallet seed phrase. The general consensus is that the victim changed their SIM card and accidentally backed up the seed phrase on iCloud or used the wallet on multiple devices.
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