MEV Bot Steals $370K from Crypto Thief, Leaves Attacker with $130K

An attacker drained approximately $501,650 in USDC from a victim's wallet on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2 network. The funds were moved to an attacker-controlled address within minutes of the phishing attack, which occurred at 02:29 UTC on August 6.

The attacker attempted to convert the stablecoin haul into wrapped ETH through a Uniswap V4 swap without setting proper slippage protection, allowing a maximal extractable value (MEV) bot to execute a sandwich attack. The MEV bot placed one transaction before and another after the attacker's swap, capturing the inflated difference.

The result was devastating for the attacker, who received only about $129,000 in ETH from the swap, a 74% haircut on the stolen funds. Meanwhile, the MEV bot spent approximately 3.5 ETH in gas fees and walked away with around $370,000 in profit.