In the past week, several Coinbase users and one cryptocurrency user have fallen victim to scammers impersonating Coinbase. One victim claims to have lost $1.7 million in the scam.
Tegan Kline, co-founder of Edge & Node, shared an explanation from a friend who had been targeted by scammers. The friend’s self-custody wallet was drained of $1.7 million after the scammer tricked them into revealing part of their seed phrase. The scammer posed as a member of Coinbase’s security team and sent an email that appeared to be from Coinbase, confirming their authenticity. The scammer then claimed that the victim’s wallet was connecting directly with the blockchain, causing unauthorized transactions. Another email, seemingly from Coinbase, displayed an outgoing transaction.
The scammer instructed the victim to visit a website and enter their seed phrase to stop the transactions. Although the victim knew it was unsafe, they entered a portion of their phrase without submitting it. Hours later, $1.7 million was drained from their wallet.
Alex Miller, CEO of Hiro Systems, also received a similar scam attempt from someone posing as Coinbase. Miller suspects that his information may have been leaked from CoinTracker’s email service provider database in 2022. He advised others to cycle their API keys if they have used CoinTracker.
On July 3, a user named “TraderPaul04” shared a sophisticated social engineering attempt by a fake Coinbase representative. The scammer claimed there was a login attempt on their account from a different city and sent a fake password reset link to steal their account password. However, TraderPaul was suspicious and insisted on calling Coinbase customer service directly, causing the scammer to hang up.
Another user named “beanx” reported a similar scam call from a fake Coinbase representative claiming that someone had tried to log in to their Coinbase account.
In the first half of 2024, approximately $1.19 billion was lost in crypto security incidents, with over $900 million stolen through phishing and seed phrase compromise attacks.
Coinbase has not yet responded to requests for comment on these incidents.
Overall, crypto scams continue to be a significant concern, with scammers becoming increasingly sophisticated in their tactics. It is crucial for users to remain vigilant and take necessary precautions to protect their assets.