A whale accidentally sent 126,000 TON ($220,000 USDT) to a scammer.

Normally, that money would have been gone forever. But a few hours later, the scammer sent 116,000 TON ($203,000 USDT) back to the whale.

He kept 10,000 TON ($17,000 USDT) and labelled it as “compensation.”

He even left a note on the public chain that said: “Sorry, this is too much. Take it back. I know it’s hard-earned.”

How did the whale lose the money in the first place?

The whale was preparing to send a large amount of TON, as usual, to another wallet.

But the scammer had already set a trap using something called “wallet poisoning.”

Scammers watch the blockchain and track active wallets that frequently send money to the same addresses. These could be exchanges, friends, or other wallets owned by the user.

Then they create fake wallet addresses that look almost identical to real ones.

The first few and the last few characters match.

At a quick glance, the address looks identical.

Next, the scammer sends a tiny transaction to the target wallet, sometimes just a few cents. This small transaction appears in the wallet’s history.

Now the fake address sits in the victim’s recent transactions.

Later, when the victim wants to send any amount, they may copy an address from their transaction history instead of carefully checking it.

That is exactly what happened here.

The whale copied the wrong address and accidentally sent 126,000 TON  to the scammer.

Luckily for him, instead of disappearing with the entire amount, the scammer returned most of it.

Some people online are calling him an honest thief.

Others believe he returned the funds because large transactions on public blockchains can sometimes be traced.

Either way, cases like this are extremely rare.