Coinbase Staff Impersonator Siphons $1.7M from User’s Wallet

[ABCbits]

Coinbase Staff Impersonator Siphons $1.7M from User’s Wallet

An impersonator has been parading itself as a top staff from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN). This past week, about three Coinbase users and one crypto user reported the incident, claiming to have received a call from this Coinbase-impersonating scammer. Unfortunately, one of them fell for the trick and allegedly lost $1.7 million in digital assets to the scammer... Read more here.


For now, there's no concentrate information how the impersonator know victim contact data. Although it's a shame since the victim could've notice it's scam due to weird-looking domain which mentioned on the tweet. Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

[Crwth]

Getting more and more complicated with this different scams. I can’t really blame the victim just because the motive or the way it was done is really intricate that makes it more believable. I just can’t imagine what the victim must be feeling losing that kind of money.

I hope somehow it will be recovered in someway, but we can always be hopeful.

[Charles-Tim]

Getting more and more complicated with this different scams. I can’t really blame the victim just because the motive or the way it was done is really intricate that makes it more believable. I just can’t imagine what the victim must be feeling losing that kind of money.

There can be new scam and ways of hacking wallets but one thing is simple and not getting complicated. This is how to avoid scam. But most people do not read about how to avoid scam and hack but want to deal with coins. This scam can easily be avoided if not ignorant about scam and hacks.

[Yamane_Keto]

Using a Coinbase number to communicate with customers is what made it easy for these scammers. I watched a documentary of an old woman who was deceived by a man who cared for her and told her that he knew someone who could double her money, and she lost everything. Fraudsters can obtain some information that only the platform team may know, such as your balance or some of your trading records, and use them to convince you.

[Lucius]

Many will certainly not like it, but the best way to prevent something like this from happening to you is to simply not have an account at CEX. If we start from the fact that the majority cannot/doesn't want to trade cryptocurrencies in some other way, then it is evident from all this that some investors do not know the basics at all. You never give your seed to anyone, whether the president of your country or the Pope of Rome calls you personally

Besides, who else keeps $1.7 million in a mobile wallet app? Well, that's the craziest of craziness at a time when you can buy a hardware wallet for less than $100. However, I have no doubt that even such a device can help those who fall for cheap tricks.

[target]

Its still a wonder how the scammer learned this victim's contact details. If he is sure have not given his number to any platforms,  is there a possibikity that some real coinbase staff took his details and gave it to the scammers?

Real piece of work scammer that has the skills to make someone give up their seed.
Coinbase is centralized, I think they should try helping tracking the coins and alert all exchange to freeze when these coins gets into and exchange.

[Z-tight]

I hope somehow it will be recovered in someway, but we can always be hopeful.

$1.7m is a lot of money, so the case is going to get a good level of attention, however, the scammer must deposit it into a custodial service before anything can be recovered.

Scammers also know that they should not deposit stolen funds into a custodial service, so i have little hope of a recovery, the scammer will be working on obscuring the origin of the funds using different tools available for that, the victim has leaned a hard lesson.

[Zed0X]

We can talk about all these type of old scamming methods all day but some people will still fall for it. Anyway, it's getting harder for these frauds to cash out all the funds they have stolen as can be seen in the tweet that part of it went to Stake. Most likely, a good portion will be returned to the victim.

[XFinite]

Coinbase Staff Impersonator Siphons $1.7M from User’s Wallet

An impersonator has been parading itself as a top staff from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN). This past week, about three Coinbase users and one crypto user reported the incident, claiming to have received a call from this Coinbase-impersonating scammer. Unfortunately, one of them fell for the trick and allegedly lost $1.7 million in digital assets to the scammer... Read more here.


For now, there's no concentrate information how the impersonator know victim contact data. Although it's a shame since the victim could've notice it's scam due to weird-looking domain which mentioned on the tweet. Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

How can one not see so many red flags from this? It's really saddening to see.

Saw these basic things that are red flags already
Site looks fake
Call from coinbase? (that's a new thing from scammer)
and it's a self custody wallet lol..

[yhiaali3]

Using a Coinbase number to communicate with customers is what made it easy for these scammers. I watched a documentary of an old woman who was deceived by a man who cared for her and told her that he knew someone who could double her money, and she lost everything. Fraudsters can obtain some information that only the platform team may know, such as your balance or some of your trading records, and use them to convince you.

Yes, it is certain that the reason is that the scammer obtained some important information and also because of the victim’s ignorance and insufficient experience. No support team can be the first caller. They always put these warnings on Telegram and say that we cannot contact you unless you call first.

This simply means that if you receive any phone call or chat on Telegram or elsewhere it is a scam unless you are the one who called in the first place. However, we do not say that there is 100% safety because scammers are always inventing new methods of fraud.

[Kemarit]

This is not new scam though, we have seen a lot of impersonations before, from Elon Musk and other well known crypto personalities. The thing is that probably with that advancement of AI, many are fallen for this trick.

Not saying that the blame should be on the victims here, but how come someone will just trust a supposedly Coinbase staff and give partial of their seed phrase?

Just makes me wonder as we all know that we shouldn't trust, but to verify first? So again, we can't stressed this enough, do not trust anyone even if they say that they are from Coinbase or any other exchanges and asked you for your partial seed phrase.

[pakhitheboss]

The scammer was in full control of the situation from the beginning. I noticed that email address was not correct from where it was sent. The main question is that how the scammer was able get the user's phone number? It looks as if someone within the exchange might have provided the details of the user to the scammer or there can be a data breach which has not been made public by the exchange.

[LogitechMouse]

~
For now, there's no concentrate information how the impersonator know victim contact data. Although it's a shame since the victim could've notice it's scam due to weird-looking domain which mentioned on the tweet. Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

These just shows that those who have huge amounts of money doesn't always have huge amount of knowledge when it comes to investing.

I don't know how the scammer did it, but knowing how the scammers usually scam these victims, I don't have that huge amount of money, but I will never, ever fall into these scammers. Well, it is what it is. It happened, and like what I always say, knowledge and experience really is very expensive because you need to lose large sum of money first before learning how to secure your assets.

As for my opinion, I hope that newbies will learn more about securing their assets.

[ABCbits]

Its still a wonder how the scammer learned this victim's contact details. If he is sure have not given his number to any platforms,  is there a possibikity that some real coinbase staff took his details and gave it to the scammers?

Yes, it's still a wonder. The news only cite speculation by Hiro Systems CEO about possible breach on CoinTracker service (which happened 2 years ago) which used by Coinbase.

The scammer was in full control of the situation from the beginning. I noticed that email address was not correct from where it was sent. The main question is that how the scammer was able get the user's phone number? It looks as if someone within the exchange might have provided the details of the user to the scammer or there can be a data breach which has not been made public by the exchange.

Yes, that's the biggest question on this case. Combining that with email (which appear legit if you let your guard down) isn't what i expect from average scam attempt.

[Z-tight]

The main question is that how the scammer was able get the user's phone number? It looks as if someone within the exchange might have provided the details of the user to the scammer or there can be a data breach which has not been made public by the exchange.

Kyc is very dangerous, i learnt that from bitcointalk, and it is very true. Any data that has been submitted to a centralized platform can find its way into the dark market, it could be in a data breach or it could be sold in an inside job.

The victim should have detected this scam, but so many of us can say this here because we have the knowledge, there are a lot of people out there whom have a lot of coins, but little to no knowledge about security.