A pseudonymous on-chain investigator is saying that Coinbase users lose millions of dollars annually to social engineering scams on the crypto exchange.
The on-chain sleuth pseudonymously known as ZachXBT tells his 755,200 followers on the social media platform X that users of Coinbase are losing more than $300 million annually to social engineering scams.
According to ZachXBT, approximately $65 million was stolen from Coinbase users between December of 2024 and January of 2025.
In the case of a victim who lost approximately $850,000, ZachXBT says that spoofed caller IDs and emails impersonating Coinbase support staff were used to drain funds from the victim’s account.
“The scammer called the victim from a spoofed phone number and used personal information obtained from private databases to gain their trust.
After they told the victim their account had multiple unauthorized login attempts.
They then sent a spoofed email which appeared to be from Coinbase with a fake Case ID further gaining trust.
They instructed the victim to transfer funds to a Coinbase Wallet and whitelist an address while ‘support’ verified their accounts security.”
According to the online sleuth, a fake version of the Coinbase website that looks almost the same as the real one is used to trick users into thinking they are interacting with the legitimate Coinbase platform.
To stop the social engineering scams, ZachXBT says,
“I strongly urge the Coinbase leadership team to consider:
a) Making phone numbers optional for advanced users with Authenticator app or Security key added who are fully Know-Your-Client verified.
b) Add a beginner / elderly user account type that doesn’t allow withdrawals.
c) Improve community outreach (blog posts for recovering user funds, 24/7 incident response, flag theft addresses, block phishing domains, etc)
d) Look into taking legal action against TLOxp / TransUnion for negligence on behalf of users as it’s the primary tool used by cybercriminals to harm users.
e) Initiate legal action against multiple US-based threat actors running these scams to make an example out of them.”
TransUnion is a US credit bureau. TLOxp is a data search and investigative tool built by TransUnion and is supposed to be used primarily by law enforcement authorities, legal professionals, private investigators and businesses to conduct in-depth background checks, locate individuals and verify identities.
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Mark Emem
https://dailyhodl.com/2025/02/05/social-engineering-scams-costing-coinbase-users-300000000-per-year-on-chain-analyst/
2025-02-05 10:15:22
