What to Know
- A wallet linked to a pig-butchering scam laundered about $7.9M (2,479 ETH) by moving funds from TRON to Ethereum and mixing them via Tornado Cash.
- Pig-butchering scams build trust over time, often through romantic or friendly chats, before pushing victims into fake crypto investments.
- Tornado Cash continues to appear in major crypto crime cases, making stolen funds hard to trace and recover.
A crypto wallet believed to be connected to a pig butchering scam has been actively laundering stolen funds. Blockchain tracking shows that the wallet has processed around 2,479 ETH, worth roughly $7.9 million.
The wallet, identified as 0xB8b45dd6A8a430b03e7cee0D783aa541F7353714, first collected money from several wallets on the TRON network. These funds were then bridged to Ethereum. From there, a large portion of the money was sent into Tornado Cash to make tracking much harder.
#PeckShieldAlert Address 0xB8b4…3714 is actively laundering funds via #TornadoCash, with 2,479.1 $ETH ($7.9M) processed so far.
The funds originated from multiple #TRON wallets before being bridged to #Ethereum. These movements appear to link the assets to a “Pig-Butchering”… pic.twitter.com/S1BKRK2hjL
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 6, 2026
So far, about $7 million has been bridged from TRON to Ethereum, and roughly $3.1 million has already been deposited into Tornado Cash.
What Is a Pig-Butchering Scam?
Pig-butchering scams are a form of long-term investment fraud. The name comes from the idea of “fattening up” the victim before taking everything. In these scams, criminals slowly build trust with victims over weeks or even months. Often, the scam starts with a random message on social media, a dating app, or a messaging platform. The conversation may turn friendly or even romantic. Over time, the scammer introduces a “great investment opportunity,” usually involving cryptocurrency.
At first, the victim may see fake profits on a website or app controlled by the scammer. Encouraged by these gains, the victim invests more and more money. Eventually, when the victim tries to withdraw funds, the scammer disappears, taking everything. Many people lose their life savings this way.
Tornado Cash allows users to mix their crypto with other users’ funds. This breaks the clear link between where the money came from and where it ends up. While privacy tools can have legitimate uses, they are also widely used by criminals trying to hide stolen funds. This latest case is not an isolated one. Tornado Cash has appeared in several major crypto crime investigations over the past year.
Recent Tornado Cash Cases
The Unleash Protocol exploit in December 2025 is one of the clearest recent examples of how stolen crypto funds are laundered. Hackers took advantage of a weakness in Unleash’s multisig governance system and drained around $3.9 million worth of assets, including WIP, USDC, and WETH. After the attack, the stolen funds were moved to Ethereum and then sent through Tornado Cash in several batches totaling more than 1,337 ETH.
In one case, an attacker deposited 95 ETH into Tornado Cash after a smart contract exploit. In another, several users on the Solana network had their wallets drained for a total of about $700,000, with the funds later bridged to Ethereum and mixed. There were also large-scale cases, including an abnormal token minting exploit involving the $GAIN token, where millions of dollars were moved across chains and hidden using the same mixer.
In September 2025, a hacker moved nearly $39 million in ETH through Tornado Cash. A month later, wallets linked to a major Japanese crypto firm lost $21 million, with the funds again passing through the mixer. More recently, a crypto whale lost $27.3 million due to a compromised multisig key, and the stolen assets were quickly laundered. In July 2024, $230M was siphoned off of WasirX via Tornado Cash.
Last year, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm went on trial in the United States. He was convicted on one charge related to running an unlicensed money business, while the jury could not agree on more serious charges. Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022, after authorities claimed it helped launder billions of dollars, including funds linked to North Korean hackers. Since then, the platform has remained a major focus for regulators and law enforcement.
Final Thoughts
This case is another reminder for crypto users to stay alert. Investment offers from strangers, especially those promising guaranteed returns or coming from online relationships, are a major red flag. Once funds are sent and mixed through services like Tornado Cash, recovery becomes extremely difficult.
As blockchain tracking improves, more of these schemes are being exposed but for victims, the damage is often already done. Staying cautious remains the best defense.
Also Read: SDNY Faces Accusations of Violating Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve Order
