Address poisoning
Plain definition. Address poisoning is a scam in which criminals send tokens from a crypto address that closely resembles one the victim has used before, hoping funds go to them instead.
Technical definition. The FBI’s Denver field office describes an address-poisoning attack as criminals sending impersonation tokens to victims from cryptocurrency addresses that closely resemble legitimate addresses the victim has previously corresponded with. Because wallet software truncates addresses, the first and last few alphanumeric characters may match a familiar address while the middle characters differ. The aim is that the victim will not double-check the intended recipient’s address and will instead send the transaction to the criminal’s address.
On this site
On this site, Address poisoning comes up in How do I move XRP from an exchange to my own wallet without losing it? and What is address poisoning, and how do I avoid it?.
Source
FBI Warns of Cryptocurrency Token Impersonation Scam — FBI (fbi.gov), read October 1, 2026.