Retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency earlier this year after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative.<\/p>\n
Suman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons\u2019 Balloon Dog<\/em> sculptures, according to a May 17 report<\/a> by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) and 225 Ether (ETH<\/a>) \u2014 a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.<\/p>\n He stored the funds in a Trezor Model One, a hardware wallet commonly used by crypto holders to avoid the risks of exchange hacks. But in March, Suman received a text message appearing to be from Coinbase, warning him of unauthorized account access.<\/p>\n After responding, he got a phone call from a man identifying himself as a Coinbase security staffer named Brett Miller. The caller appeared knowledgeable, correctly stating that Suman\u2019s funds were stored in a hardware wallet.<\/p>\n He then convinced Suman that his wallet could still be vulnerable and walked him through a \u201csecurity procedure\u201d that involved entering his seed phrase into a website mimicking Coinbase\u2019s interface.<\/p>\n Nine days later, a second caller claiming to be from Coinbase repeated the process. By the end of that call, all of Suman\u2019s crypto holdings were gone.<\/p>\n Crypto scammers impersonate Coinbase support. Source: <\/em>NanoBaiter<\/em><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n Related:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Bitcoin breaks out while Coinbase breaks down: Finance Redefined<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n The scam followed a data breach at Coinbase disclosed<\/a> this week, in which attackers bribed customer support staff in India to access sensitive user information.<\/p>\n Stolen data included customer names, account balances, and transaction histories. Coinbase confirmed the breach impacted roughly 1% of its monthly transacting users.<\/p>\n Among those affected was venture capitalist Roelof Botha<\/a>, managing partner at Sequoia Capital. There is no indication that his funds were accessed, and Botha declined to comment.<\/p>\n Coinbase\u2019s chief security officer, Philip Martin, reportedly\u00a0said the contracted customer service agents<\/a> at the center of the controversy were based in India and had been fired following the breach.<\/p>\n The exchange has also said it plans to pay between $180 million and $400 million in remediation and reimbursement to affected users.<\/p>\nCoinbase suffers major data breach<\/h2>\n