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I sent funds to a poisoned address — what now?
We'll be honest: money sent to a poisoning lookalike is usually not recovered. But a few steps matter, and one of them protects you from losing more.
The short version: a blockchain payment can't be reversed by the sender. Stop using your transaction history, write down what happened, report it, and don't pay anyone who promises to get the money back.
1. Make sure it doesn't happen twice
- Stop copying addresses from your history. Bots often keep refreshing the bait and copy your new amount within minutes, hoping you'll pay again.
- Get your real counterparty's address from them directly and save it in your wallet's address book.
- If all that happened was a payment to a lookalike, your wallet itself isn't compromised: poisoning never touches your keys. (If you also signed an approval or connected to a strange site, that is a different attack: revoke approvals and consider moving funds.)
2. Write down the facts
Keep the transaction hash of your payment, the lookalike address you paid, the real address you meant to pay, the amount, the token, the network (Base) and the time. Screenshots of your wallet history help. Reports and any later investigation need these.
3. Report it
- The police. In the US, file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. Elsewhere, report to your national police or cybercrime unit.
- Your wallet or exchange. If you sent from an exchange account, contact its support at once through its official website or app. If you know where the stolen funds went next, tell them that too.
- Us. Send the lookalike address to lauras@verdixapi.com if our checker doesn't show it as flagged, so others are warned.
4. Beware of “recovery” services
People who just lost crypto are targeted again. The FBI has warned about businesses that claim they can trace and recover lost cryptocurrency: they contact victims on social media or messaging apps, charge an up-front fee, and then disappear or ask for more. The FBI's warning is plain:
- Private recovery companies cannot issue seizure orders to recover cryptocurrency.
- Law enforcement does not charge victims a fee for investigating crimes. If someone claims to be from the FBI, contact your local FBI field office to confirm.
- Don't share personal or financial information with, or send money to, anyone promising recovery.
Anyone who messages you first after a loss, offering to get it back, should be treated as a scammer.
Why recovery is rare
The payment is final on-chain, and the attacker controls the lookalike's key. In the largest case we documented, the stolen USDC was still sitting at the lookalike the same evening, and only the attacker can move it. Recovery is possible only in narrow cases, for example when funds reach a service that freezes them after a police request, and that takes time. Prevention is the only reliable protection: see how to spot address poisoning.
Sources
- FBI IC3, “Increase in Companies Falsely Claiming an Ability to Recover Funds Lost in Cryptocurrency Investment Scams”, August 11, 2023: https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2023/psa230811
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov/
- Tsuchiya, Dong, Soska, Christin, “Blockchain Address Poisoning”, USENIX Security 2025: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16681
- Verdix, “Base address poisoning — October 2026” (counts, method, three payments to flagged lookalikes): https://api.verdixapi.com/report/2026-10