Recently, another shocking phishing case has come to light. An institution was precisely targeted within just a few hours, losing a total of 50 million USDT. The details of the entire incident are worth everyone’s careful review.

Here's what happened. After this whale withdrew 50 million USDT from a major exchange, they followed the usual procedure of doing a small test transfer—sending 50 USDT to the target address to confirm it was correct. This habit is actually correct, but the next step became a fatal vulnerability.

The phishing attackers are quite experienced. They generated a wallet address that shares the first and last three characters with the target address, then transferred 0.005 USDT to it. The purpose of this is very clear—creating recent transaction records. When the institution made the official transfer, they probably copied the address directly from the transaction record out of haste, and accidentally sent 50 million USDT to a fake address.

Now, the money has already moved. The phishing attackers immediately swapped the funds into DAI to avoid freezing risks, then converted all the DAI into 16,624 ETH. These ETH were then layered through the Tornado Cash protocol for mixing, ultimately disappearing into the ocean of the blockchain.

The most heartbreaking part of this case is—no matter how cautious one is, a small oversight can ruin all previous efforts. The trick of using similar addresses for phishing may seem simple, but it’s this high level of deception that causes many to fall for it. So next time you make a transfer, don’t be lazy—double-check the real address, don’t rely solely on copy-paste. That little extra time is worth real safety and security.