Scam Address
A scam address is a wallet identified as collecting funds through deliberate deception — a fake investment scheme, a romance scam, a fraudulent token sale, or a phishing campaign impersonating a legitimate service. It differs from a phishing address mainly in the mechanism used to obtain the funds.
Scam Address
A scam address is a wallet identified as collecting funds through deliberate deception — a fake investment scheme, a romance scam, a fraudulent token sale, or a phishing campaign impersonating a legitimate service. It differs from a phishing address mainly in the mechanism used to obtain the funds.
What it means
Scam addresses are usually identified after the fact, through victim reports, blockchain analysis of a known fraud pattern, or investigative reporting, rather than being known in advance. This means the label dataset behind a scam-address check is only as current as its most recent update, and new scams routinely operate for a period before their addresses are catalogued anywhere.
Pig-butchering scams — long-running romance or friendship schemes that gradually convince a victim to move increasing sums into a fake investment platform — have become one of the largest categories of scam-address activity by dollar volume, often funneling funds through a chain of intermediate wallets before reaching an exchange for cash-out.
Real-world example
The 2023 Tether freeze of $225 million connected to Southeast Asian pig-butchering operations targeted exactly this category: wallets that had collected victim deposits under the pretense of legitimate crypto investment before the scheme was identified and reported.
Related terms
In FreezeRadar
FreezeRadar's entity label dataset draws on public scam reports and known fraud-pattern research to flag scam-address exposure, updated as new confirmed cases are added.
By FreezeRadar Team
Research and product team behind FreezeRadar.
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