A victim of a 90 Ether hack has taken a significant step towards recovering their losses. Collaborating with law enforcement and cyber authorities, the victim managed to blacklist the hacker’s Tether address. While this effort offers hope of fund recovery, challenges remain.
[2023/08/11 17:30] USDT blacklisted 0x788bc56b67c289399cd6e2022f0d76484f04724a in block 17893148 https://t.co/WipjkHXFGp
— usdt blacklist (@usdtblacklist) August 11, 2023
The victim, known as L3yum on X (formerly Twitter), was targeted on March 16, resulting in the loss of approximately $166,000 worth of Ethereum. The hacker accessed the victim’s hot wallet seed phrase, siphoning off nonfungible tokens (NFTs) linked to Yuga Labs and other assets, subsequently exchanging or selling them.
Blacklisting Success and Recovery Prospects
In an encouraging update on August 11, L3yum revealed that the hacker’s Ethereum-based USDT address had been successfully blacklisted and frozen, holding around $107,306 worth of USDT. This move raises the possibility of reclaiming a significant portion of the stolen funds. However, the final outcome remains uncertain.
The people I was working with were amazing
The original police officer I dealt with didn’t even know anything about crypto aside from hearing of it, but after a few phone calls just by the way he was talking I knew he was learning and actually cared
Very grateful— L3yum🍌 (@l3yum) August 11, 2023
Potential Reimbursement Strategy
In similar cases where Tether (USDT) addresses have been blacklisted, Tether has burned the blacklisted USDT and issued equivalent amounts to the original owner. However, this generally occurs after a court order.
L3yum suggested this path forward might be likely but is awaiting confirmation. The victim’s proactive engagement with authorities underscores the growing collaboration between law enforcement and the crypto community to mitigate and address such incidents.
