Refund of $70M 'address poisoning' scam ongoing with over 50% returned

A victim initially involved in a $70 million ‘address poisoning’ scam is in the process of getting refunded. A significant portion of the funds (14,500 ETH) has already been sent back to the victim’s Ethereum address. Nearly a week after the original loss of 1155 WBTC, transactions ranging from 25 ETH to 50 ETH started to come in from multiple addresses where the stolen funds had been dispersed. Scammers use address poisoning to deceive crypto users into transferring funds to a similar-looking address. By creating thousands of addresses and sending small transactions from one that closely resembles the victim's address, they mess up the victim's transfer history before awaiting an error. Once the victim mistakenly sends money to a scammer, the attack succeeds. After falling for the trap, the victim messaged the scammer through Ethereum’s input data messaging system to possibly negotiate a return. So far, over half of the stolen funds have been successfully returned in more than 200 transactions upon the victim's confirmation of receiving the initial amount.