Renowned artist Ed Suman, 67, lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative. The scammers, who were allegedly bribed customer service agents from India, convinced Suman to enter his seed phrase into a fake website mimicking Coinbase’s interface.
Suman had accumulated 17.5 Bitcoin and 225 Ether, storing the funds in a Trezor Model One hardware wallet. However, after receiving a warning message claiming his account was compromised, he received two calls from individuals identifying themselves as Coinbase security staff members. The scammers successfully convinced Suman to follow their instructions, resulting in the loss of all his crypto holdings.
This scam follows a recent data breach at Coinbase, which exposed customer names, account balances, and transaction histories for around 1% of its monthly transacting users. Affected users are set to receive compensation ranging from $180 million to $400 million.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/retired-artist-loses-2m-in-crypto-to-coinbase-impersonator