{"id":129479,"date":"2025-05-18T08:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T08:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=129479"},"modified":"2025-05-18T08:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T08:20:14","slug":"retired-artist-loses-2m-in-crypto-to-coinbase-impersonator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=129479","title":{"rendered":"Retired artist loses $2M in crypto to Coinbase impersonator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsRetired 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.<br \/>\nSuman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons\u2019 Balloon Dog sculptures, according to a May 17 report by Bloomberg.<br \/>\nAfter retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC) and 225 Ether (ETH) \u2014 a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.<br \/>\nHe 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.<br \/>\nAfter 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.<br \/>\nHe 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.<br \/>\nNine 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.<br \/>\nCrypto scammers impersonate Coinbase support. Source: NanoBaiter Related:\u00a0Bitcoin breaks out while Coinbase breaks down: Finance Redefined<br \/>\nCoinbase suffers major data breach<br \/>\nThe scam followed a data breach at Coinbase disclosed this week, in which attackers bribed customer support staff in India to access sensitive user information.<br \/>\nStolen data included customer names, account balances, and transaction histories. Coinbase confirmed the breach impacted roughly 1% of its monthly transacting users.<br \/>\nAmong those affected was venture capitalist Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital. There is no indication that his funds were accessed, and Botha declined to comment.<br \/>\nCoinbase\u2019s chief security officer, Philip Martin, reportedly\u00a0said the contracted customer service agents at the center of the controversy were based in India and had been fired following the breach.<br \/>\nThe exchange has also said it plans to pay between $180 million and $400 million in remediation and reimbursement to affected users.<br \/>\nMagazine: Arthur Hayes $1M Bitcoin tip, altcoins\u2019 powerful rally\u2019 looms: Hodler\u2019s Digest, May 11 \u2013 17<a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/retired-artist-loses-2m-in-crypto-to-coinbase-impersonator?utm_source=rss_feed&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"feedzy-rss-link-icon\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsRetired 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. Suman,&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129479"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}