A crypto whale tracked by onchain security firm Scam Sniffer as “TLBL” had more than $26 million drained across three wallets in under 15 minutes in what investigators describe as a suspected private key compromise, with the stolen assets quickly converted into DAI and ETH. On-chain monitor Lookonchain flagged the drain as it happened, noting the entity had already lost $24 million to a phishing attack roughly two years earlier.
The repeat targeting is what makes the case notable. After the 2023 phishing incident, the attacker actually returned about 90% of the stolen funds — a gesture sometimes seen in crypto phishing cases, whether out of a hacker's own risk calculus or negotiated pressure — yet the whale continued using the same exposed keys afterward rather than migrating to fresh, uncompromised wallets. That decision appears to have left the door open for this second, larger breach.
Full Key Exposure, Not a Signature Trick
Investigators noted a detail that narrows down how the attacker got in: one of the three drained wallets had never granted any token approvals, which rules out the common signature-phishing method where victims unknowingly sign a malicious approval transaction. With no approvals on record, the drain points instead to the attacker holding the private keys themselves — full key exposure rather than a tricked signature — a more serious and harder-to-detect form of compromise. Onchain data tracked by Arkham Intelligence shows the entity's full transaction history across both incidents.
Related: Victim Loses $100K to Address Poisoning After Copying From History
A Pattern Security Researchers Keep Warning About
The case echoes a broader theme in wallet security: once keys are known to be compromised, continuing to use them — rather than moving all assets to a newly generated wallet — leaves holders exposed to repeat attacks, sometimes years apart. For whale-sized holdings, that lesson carries an outsized cost, as this latest drain more than made up for whatever the attacker returned the first time around.
