Scammer poses as Coinbase support and steals US$ 2 million from retired artist

A retired artist in the United States lost US$ 2 million in cryptocurrencies after falling for a sophisticated phishing scam that simulated customer service from the Coinbase exchange.

Ed Suman, 67, had been accumulating his savings in crypto assets after retiring from the art sector, where he worked for nearly 20 years, including work with sculptures by Jeff Koons. He stored 17.5 Bitcoin and 225 Ether in a physical Trezor wallet, considered one of the safest forms of digital protection.

In March, Suman received a text message alerting him about a supposed unauthorized access to his account on Coinbase. The message was followed by a call from a man who introduced himself as a member of the company's security team. The scammer, demonstrating technical knowledge, instructed Suman to enter his seed phrase — a code that provides unrestricted access to the wallet — on a fake website that mimicked the Coinbase environment.

Nine days later, another contact, also posing as support from the exchange, repeated the same procedure. In the end, all of Suman's assets had been transferred to accounts controlled by the scammers.

The scam occurred after the revelation of a data breach at Coinbase. Internal investigations indicate that outsourced employees in India were bribed to leak confidential customer information, such as names, balances, and transaction histories. The company confirmed that 1% of active monthly users were affected.

Among the affected is Roelof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital. Despite the exposure, his funds were not accessed.

Coinbase announced that it intends to compensate impacted users, with amounts between US$ 180 million and US$ 400 million. After the incident, those involved in the leak were terminated from the company.