TechFlow news, on May 18, according to Cointelegraph, Ed Suman, a 67-year-old retired art maker, fell victim to a Coinbase customer service impersonation scam earlier this year, losing over $2 million worth of cryptocurrency, including 17.5 bitcoins and 225 ether, which constituted the majority of his retirement savings.
The incident occurred in March when Suman received a text message appearing to be from Coinbase, warning him of unauthorized access to his account. Shortly after, a man identifying himself as Coinbase security officer "Brett Miller" called him, demonstrating professional knowledge by accurately stating that Suman's funds were stored in a hardware wallet.
The scammer convinced Suman that his wallet remained vulnerable and guided him through a so-called "security procedure," tricking him into entering his recovery phrase on a fake Coinbase website interface. Nine days later, a second caller claiming to be from Coinbase repeated the process. After the call ended, all of Suman’s cryptocurrency holdings were stolen.
This scam followed a data breach disclosed by Coinbase this week, in which attackers bribed customer support staff in India to obtain sensitive user information. The stolen data included customer names, account balances, and transaction histories, affecting approximately 1% of Coinbase's monthly active users.
